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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

China’s initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan spread twice as fast as we thought, new study suggests

  • Each carrier was infecting 5.7 people on average, according to US researchers, who say previous estimate had used incomplete data
  • Latest data based on cases whose origin could be traced more clearly, in provinces that had test kits and ample health care capacity

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A passenger wearing a protective mask arrives at a railway station in Wuhan on the first day inbound train services resumed following the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: Reuters
Matt Ho
The new coronavirus could have been twice as contagious as previously thought when it spread from its initial epicentre in central China, a fresh look at the early stages of the outbreak has suggested.

Epidemiologists had previously estimated that each person with Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, infected two to three people on average, based on early cases in the city of Wuhan.

But researchers in the United States have said that the chaos in Wuhan as infections there rose at the start of the year may have produced incomplete data and a distorted picture.

The new estimation by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is that those who carried the coronavirus in Wuhan were passing it on to 5.7 people on average.

The finding could help public health experts to refine their containment and vaccination strategies.

In their study, published last week in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the researchers, led by Steven Sanche and Lin Yen-ting, wrote: “Unavailability of diagnostic reagents early in the outbreak, changes in surveillance intensity and case definitions, and overwhelmed health care systems confound estimates of the growth of the outbreak based on data.”

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