Coronavirus: infection rate in US and Wuhan higher than previously thought

Name: China’s Wuhan moves on as global coronavirus death toll passes 1 million
Uploaded: 2020-09-30T04:00:10.000Z
Duration: 2 min 1 s
Description: China’s Wuhan moves on as global coronavirus death toll passes 1 million

Modelling by Chinese data scientists finds the basic reproduction number around 8 for earliest outbreak in China and in recent months in America

Team suggests transmission in hospitals is different from those in the community

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People in Wuhan are out and about wearing masks on September 27, 2020. A new study by Chinese data scientists say in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan, the virus reproduction number was 7.9. Photo: AFP

Stephen Chen

Published: 12:00pm, 30 Sep 2020Updated: 12:47pm, 30 Sep 2020

A new coronavirus carrier in town could pass the virus to eight other people, significantly more than previous estimates, according to a new study by Chinese scientists.

Such a high reproduction number occurred in the central Chinese city of Wuhan early this year when people were caught by surprise by an unknown virus, and it is still happening in the United States “in the absence of control measures”, the researchers said.

Modelling from a team led by data scientist Zhu Hongjun from the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications suggests that the basic reproduction number (R0) of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in these two areas – Wuhan at the beginning of the outbreak and the US recently – is quite similar at around 8. The study was published in a non-peer-reviewed paper posted in medRxiv.org on Monday.

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China’s Wuhan moves on as global coronavirus death toll passes 1 million

R0 is the number of secondary infections caused by a carrier in an unexposed population. Governments take the R0 number into account when planning coronavirus response measures. Most previous estimates on the R0 ranged from 2 to 4 for the Covid-19 pandemic, a similar measure to the Sars outbreak.

“These previous results are controversial, and even misleading,” Zhu said.

Sars, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was caused by another strain of deadly coronavirus in 2003, spreading to 29 countries and infecting more than 8,000 people worldwide.

Covid-19 has infected more than 33.5 million people, caused more than 1 million deaths and is still spreading.