Key info
Date:
21 February 2020
Authors:
Sangeeta Bhatia, Natsuko Imai, Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg, Marc Baguelin, Adhiratha Boonyasiri, Anne Cori, Zulma Cucunubá, Ilaria Dorigatti, Rich FitzJohn, Han Fu, Katy Gaythorpe, Azra Ghani, Arran Hamlet, Wes Hinsley, Daniel Laydon, Gemma Nedjati-Gilani, Lucy Okell, Steven Riley, Hayley Thompson, Sabine van Elsland, Erik Volz, Haowei Wang, Yuanrong Wang, Charlie Whittaker, Xiaoyue Xi, Christl A. Donnelly1, Neil M. Ferguson
1Correspondence:
Christl Donnelly
c.donnelly@imperial.ac.uk
WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling; MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis; Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics; Imperial College London, UK
Now published in Wellcome Open Research; 13-09-2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15805.2
Summary
Since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic in late 2019, there are now 29 affected countries with over 1000 confirmed cases outside of mainland China. In previous reports, we estimated the likely epidemic size in Wuhan City based on air traffic volumes and the number of detected cases internationally. Here we analysed COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China to different regions and countries, comparing the country-specific rates of detected and confirmed cases per flight volume to estimate the relative sensitivity of surveillance in different countries. Although travel restrictions from Wuhan City and other cities across China may have reduced the absolute number of travellers to and from China, we estimated that about two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside mainland China.
Appendix data sources
Data on cases in international travellers: international_cases_2020_21_02.csv
Translations
- 中文 - Mandarin
- 日本語 - Japanese
- Español - Spanish
- Français - French
- Italiano - Italian
- Arabic - العربية
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