Science· 2020Q1
Effective containment explains subexponential growth in recent confirmed COVID-19 cases in China
- 974citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2020year
Short summary
Containment policies, not inherent disease properties, explain the subexponential growth of early COVID-19 cases in China by depleting the susceptible population.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Early COVID-19 growth in China was subexponential, not exponential.
- Containment policies effectively reduced the susceptible population.
- A parsimonious model incorporating quarantine and isolation accurately reflects observed case growth.
- The findings contrast with expectations for unconstrained outbreaks.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in mainland China was characterized by a distinctive subexponential increase of confirmed cases during the early phase of the epidemic, contrasting with an initial exponential growth expected for an unconstrained outbreak. We show that this effect can be explained as a direct consequence of containment policies that effectively deplete the susceptible population. To this end, we introduce a parsimonious model that captures both quarantine of symptomatic infected individuals, as well as population-wide isolation practices in response to containment policies or behavioral changes, and show that the model captures the observed growth behavior accurately. The insights provided here may aid the careful implementation of containment strategies for ongoing secondary outbreaks of COVID-19 or similar future outbreaks of other emergent infectious diseases.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Science, 2020 · DOI ↗
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Field: Modeling and Simulation
Modeling and SimulationMathematics