Assessing spread risk of Wuhan novel coronavirus within and beyond China, January-April 2020: a travel network-based modelling study

Shengjie Lai; Isaac Bogoch; Nick Ruktanonchai; Alexander Watts; Xin Lu; Weizhong Yang; Hongjie Yu; Kamran Khan; Andrew J Tatem

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020479 doi: medRxiv preprint previous non-outbreak years, when significant spatio-temporal changes to human travel behaviours across and beyond China have likely occurred recently. Second, the mobile phone data used may provide an incomplete and biased picture of travellers, as the data only cover the population owning a smart phone and using Baidu apps. Third, the case data used in this study likely varies in quality and completeness due to the timeliness of reporting, varying laboratory diagnosis capacities, and differences in details announced on health authority websites. Fourth, compared with airline travellers leaving Wuhan prior to January 23 rd evacuees from Wuhan during the January 29 th -31 st period might have a higher risk of infection due to their longer stay in Wuhan during the potential continued spread of the virus since January 23 rd . This may result in overestimates of the number of infections in airline travellers from Wuhan prior to the city's lockdown. Based on more recent population movement and epidemiological data, we aim to conduct more sophisticated modelling approaches to assess the effectiveness of control measures in China, the impact of movements of people returning from LNY holiday, as well as the risks of a 2019-nCoV global pandemic.