Epidemiologic Characteristics of COVID-19 in Guizhou, China

Ping, Kaike

At the end of 2019, a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbroke in Wuhan, China, and spread to Guizhou province on January of 2020. To acquire the epidemiologic characteristics of COVID-19 in Guizhou, China, we collected data on 162 laboratory-confirmed cases related to COVID-19. We described the demographic characteristics of the cases and estimated the incubation period, serial interval and basic reproduction number. We also presented two representative case studies in Guizhou province -- Case Study 1 was an example of asymptomatic carrier; and Case Study 2 was an example of a large and complex infection chain that involved four different districts spanning three provinces and eight families. With an estimation of 8 days incubation period and 6 days serial interval, our results indicate that there may exist infectiousness during the incubation period for 2019-nCoV. This increases the difficulty of screening or identifying cases related to COVID-19.