Epidemic analysis of COVID-19 in China by dynamical modeling

TLDR

The outbreak of novel coronavirus‑caused pneumonia (COVID‑19) in Wuhan has attracted worldwide attention. The study proposes a generalized SEIR model to analyze the COVID‑19 epidemic. Based on public data from the National Health Commission of China (Jan 20–Feb 9 2020), we estimate key epidemic parameters and predict inflection points and possible end times for five regions. Optimistic estimates predict Beijing and Shanghai will end within two weeks, most of China by mid‑March, Wuhan by early April, and the outbreak likely began in late December 2019 with an early doubling time of about two days.

Abstract

The outbreak of novel coronavirus-caused pneumonia (COVID-19) in Wuhan has attracted worldwide attention. Here, we propose a generalized SEIR model to analyze this epidemic. Based on the public data of National Health Commission of China from Jan. 20th to Feb. 9th, 2020, we reliably estimate key epidemic parameters and make predictions on the inflection point and possible ending time for 5 different regions. According to optimistic estimation, the epidemics in Beijing and Shanghai will end soon within two weeks, while for most part of China, including the majority of cities in Hubei province, the success of anti-epidemic will be no later than the middle of March. The situation in Wuhan is still very severe, at least based on public data until Feb. 15th. We expect it will end up at the beginning of April. Moreover, by inverse inference, we find the outbreak of COVID-19 in Mainland, Hubei province and Wuhan all can be dated back to the end of December 2019, and the doubling time is around two days at the early stage.