Evaluating new evidence in the early dynamics of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China with real time domestic traffic and potential asymptomatic transmissions

Can Zhou

Another alternative source of information comes from the evacuated foreign nationals, which provide snapshot views of the status of the epidemic in the city of Wuhan. Between Jan 29 and Feb 2, 2020, there have been 2,666 foreign nationals evacuated out of Wuhan, and their health has been closely monitored after arrival at their destination, 12 of them have been tested positive for COVD-19 infection as of this writing (Feb 11, 2020) . There has been at least 9 days between the latest date of evacuation included in this study and the last day of confirmation to avoid any bias in the infection rate. It should be emphasized that these evacuation flights took place after the city of Wuhan was quarantined, and all the successfully evacuated individuals have passed at least two rounds of body temperature screenings at the airport. In this study, it is assumed that these evacuees provide a representative sample of the status of the general population in Wuhan at the time of extraction. A subset of the evacuees data has been analyzed in Nishiura, Kobayashi, et al. (2020) With updated real time domestic traffic data, this study aims to update the current status of the COVD-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan with the alternative information from the evacuees between the end of January and the start of February. In addition, the currently used prediction model for this outbreak, i.e., SEIR, does not allow for potential transmission of infection from latent individuals. In this study, the author modifies the SEIR model to evaluate the empirical support for the presence of asymptomatic transmissions based on current evidence.