Base Reproduction Number of COVID-19: Statistic Analysis

Zhu, Hongjun; HUANG, JIANGPING; LIU, XIN

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has grown up to be a pandemic within a short span of time. The quantification of COVID-19 transmissibility is desired for purposes of assessing the potential for a place to start an outbreak and the extent of transmission in the absence of control measures. It is well known that the transmissibility can be measured by reproduction number. For this reason, the large amount of research focuses on the estimations of reproduction number of COVID-19. However, these previous results are controversial and even misleading. To alleviate this problem, Liu et al advised to use averaging technique. Unfortunately, the fluctuant consequence principally arises from data error or model limitations rather than stochastic noise, where the averaging technique doesn't work well. The most likely estimation in USA and Wuhan is about 8.21 and 7.9. However, no enough evidence demonstrates the transmissibility increase of infectious agent of COVID-19 throughout the world.