The spatial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in China under the prevention and control measures at the early outbreak

Abstract

Background Since severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was firstly reported in Wuhan City, China in December 2019, Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) that is caused by SARS-CoV-2 is predominantly spread from person-to-person on worldwide scales. Now, COVID-19 is a non-traditional and major public health issue the world is facing, and the outbreak is a global pandemic. The strict prevention and control measures have mitigated the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and shown positive changes with important progress in China. But prevention and control tasks remain arduous for the world. The objective of this study is to discuss the difference of spatial transmission characteristics of COVID-19 in China at the early outbreak stage with resolute efforts. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 trend of China at the early time was described from the statistical perspective using a mathematical model to evaluate the effectiveness of the prevention and control measures. Methods In this study, the accumulated number of confirmed cases publicly reported by the National Health Committee of the People’s Republic of China (CNHC) from January 20 to February 11, 2020, were grouped into three partly overlapping regions: Chinese mainland including Hubei province, Hubei province alone, and the other 30 provincial-level regions on Chinese mainland excluding Hubei province, respectively. A generalized-growth model (GGM) was used to estimate the basic reproduction number to evaluate the transmissibility in different spatial locations. The prevention and control of COVID-19 in the early stage were analyzed based on the number of new cases of confirmed infections daily reported. Results Results indicated that the accumulated number of confirmed cases reported from January 20 to February 11, 2020, is well described by the GGM model with a larger correlation coefficient than 0.99. When the accumulated number of confirmed cases is well fitted by an exponential function, the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 of the 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland, Hubei province, and the other 30 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland excluding Hubei province, is 2.68, 6.46 and 2.18, respectively. The consecutive decline of the new confirmed cases indicated that the prevention and control measures taken by the Chinese government have contained the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in a short period. Conclusions The estimated basic reproduction number thorough GGM model can reflect the spatial difference of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in China at the early stage. The strict prevention and control measures of SARS-CoV-2 taken at the early outbreak can effectively reduce the new confirmed cases outside Hubei and have mitigated the spread and yielded positive results since February 2, 2020. The research results indicated that the outbreak of COVID-19 in China was sustaining localized at the early outbreak stage and has been gradually curbed by China’s resolute efforts.

Spatio-temporal characteristics and control strategies in the early period of COVID-19 spread: a case study of the mainland China

“…So the government will take corresponding measures according to the characteristics of infectious diseases. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, various provincial administrative regions of China have successively activated the first-level public health emergency responses and adopted the most stringent measures to face it (Younis et al 2020;Liu et al 2021). The result proves that the speed of the government's response largely affects the development of the epidemic situation, even determines whether the inflection point of the total confirmed cases can come as soon as possible (Fang et al 2020).…”

“…After April 2020, COVID-19 in mainland China has generally stabilized, and the epidemic prevention and control has entered a regular stage (Jiang 2020;Lai et al 2020). Facts have proved that the prevention and control measures adopted by the Chinese government have contained the spread of COVID-19 to the maximum extent and have taken the lead in realizing economic recovery (Feng et al 2020;Younis et al 2020;Liu et al 2021). China's experience can provide some reference for other countries in the world.…”

“…It has awakened people's awareness of taking the initiative to prevent the spread of the epidemic and thus played a positive role in overcoming the epidemic. Second, to control the epidemic disease, all provincial-level administrative regions in mainland China have successively implemented the first-level public health emergency response (Cheng et al 2020;Wang et al 2020b;Liu et al 2021). Such large-scale and high-standard emergency measures are relatively rare in mainland China.…”

“…The research about government control was generally based on mainland China because all government levels there have implemented interventional measures, such as locking down cities, curbing population flow, and controlling traffic (Liu et al 2020d;Shen 2020;Wei et al 2021). Moreover, the implementation of such interventional measures owned a precise start time, which was also conducive to the accuracy of the evaluation (Liu et al 2021). Some articles analyzed and summarized the differences in epidemics' development before and after government control or the possible situation under different control intensities (Ye and Hu 2020;Chen et al 2021).…”

Spatial simulation of COVID-19 new cases development

“…This is due to the formulation of the primitive and extended SIR model being differential equations with time dependence only [1] [10]. Studies investigating spatial transmission focus on observations [11], [12], [13]. Few work [14] focuses on modelling spatial transmissions of COVID-19.…”