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is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint .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 Wuhan for hundreds of destination cities across the world during the two weeks prior to the travel restriction implemented in the city. Substantial preparedness efforts at destination cities should be taken to prevent further international seeding and transmission, otherwise the local establishment of epidemics, and even a pandemic, might become inevitable. For example, exit and entry screening may be futher extended to capture travellers with fever who have potentially been exposed to the virus in high-risk Chinese cities where local transmission has been established. However, we estimated that a huge volume of airline travellers would be required to be screened in February to April, even under the scenario of significant reduction (90%) in air passengers compared with the same period of previous years. Therefore, ensuring that surveillance and health systems around the world are ready and sufficiently strong to detect and deal with cases seen is a priority.