Time-varying transmission dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia in China

Tao Liu; Jianxiong Hu; Jianpeng Xiao; Guanhao He; Min Kang; Zuhua Rong; Lifeng Lin; Haojie Zhong; Qiong Huang; Aiping Deng; Weilin Zeng; Xiaohua Tan; Siqing Zeng; Zhihua Zhu; Jiansen Li; Dexin Gong; Donghua Wan; Shaowei Chen; Lingchuan Guo; Yan Li; Limei Sun; Wenjia Liang; Tie Song; Jianfeng He; Wenjun Ma

Our estimated R0 was larger than that (R0=2.2) reported by Li et al. who employed the data in Wuhan between December 10, 2019 and January 4, 2020, the very early stage of this epidemic (7) . It was debated that the number of NCP cases might be seriously underreported in the early stage (10, 23) , since 2019-nCoV was confirmed on January 7, and the official diagnosis protocol was released by WHO until January 17 (12) . In addition, the surveillance was not widely conducted, and many infections may be missed. Read et al. estimated that only 5.1% of infections in Wuhan were identified in the early period (23). Zhao et al. estimated that the R0 of NCP was larger than 5.0 using national reported data from January 10 to January 24, 2020, under the scenario that the reporting rate was not changed during that period (12) .