Abstract
BackgroundCoronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly around the world. We aimed to describe the epidemiological characteristics and the entire evolution of COVID-19 in Wuhan, and to evaluate the effect of non-pharmaceutical intervention by the government.MethodsThe information of COVID-19 cases until Mar 18, 2020 in Wuhan were collected from the national infectious disease surveillance system in Hubei province.ResultsA total of 49,973 confirmed cases were reported until Mar 18, 2020 in Wuhan. Among whom, 2496 cases died and the overall mortality was 5.0%. Most confirmed cases (25,619, 51.3%) occurred during Jan 23 to Feb 4, with a spike on Feb 1 (new cases, 3374). The number of daily new cases started to decrease steadily on Feb 19 (new cases, 301) and decreased greatly on Mar 1 (new cases, 57). However, the mortality and the proportion of severe and critical cases has been decreasing over time, with the lowest of 2.0 and 10.1% during Feb 16 to Mar 18, 2020, respectively. The percentage of severe and critical cases among all cases was 19.6%, and the percentage of critical and dead cases aged over 60 was 70.1 and 82.0%, respectively.ConclusionThe number of new cases has dropped significantly after the government taking the isolation of four types of personnel and the community containment for 14 days. Our results indicate that the mortality and proportion of severe and critical cases gradually decreased over time, and critical and dead cases are more incline to be older individuals.
Highlights
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly around the world
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been named by the World Health Organization (WHO) since Feb 11, 2020 [1], and the WHO announces a pandemic of COVID-19 on Mar 11, 2020 [2]
In order to avoid the spread of COVID-19 and block transmission to other regions, the government asked all citizens to stay at home and interrupted public traffic in the city, and suspended all transport links and blocked the roads out of the Wuhan city on 23 January, 2020 [9], covering approximately 10 million populations in Wuhan [10, 11]
Summary
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly around the world. Spreading and growing cases of COVID-19 have become major risks for global health. In response to the outbreak, other non-pharmaceutical interventions including shelter hospitals and community containment measures were enforced during the evolution of COVID-19 in Wuhan [12]. These intervention measures should play important role in stopping the spread of the disease. As for Mar 18, 2020, the new suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 were both reported to be zero in Wuhan [13]. To what extent did the non-pharmaceutical interventions in Wuhan play the roles and when did they start to work? All these are highly concerned and expected by COVID-19 epidemic areas around the world
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