Transmission dynamics and high infectiousness of Coronavirus Disease 2019

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread around the world since the early 2020. Recently, a second wave of COVID-19 has resurged in many countries. The transmission dynamics and infectiousness of the COVID-19 pandemic remain unclear, and developing strategies to mitigate the severity of the pandemic is a top priority for global public health. According to the infection mechanism of COVID-19, a novel susceptible-asymptomatic-symptomatic-recovered (SASR) model with control variables in a patchy environment was proposed not only to consider the key characteristics of asymptomatic infection and the effects of seasonal variation but also to incorporate different control measures for multiple transmission routes. The basic reproduction number <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ R_{0} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> was established to describe the spreading behavior in the natural state over a long time horizon, and the natural reproduction number <inline-formula><tex-math id="M2">\begin{document}$ R_{n} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, which describes the development trend of the disease during a short time in the future, was defined according to the actual propagation characteristics. In addition, the effective reproduction number <inline-formula><tex-math id="M3">\begin{document}$ R_{e} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> considering the control strategies was proposed to evaluate the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions. The results of numerical simulations for COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China, based on the SASR model indicate that <inline-formula><tex-math id="M4">\begin{document}$ R_{0} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> was 3.58, <inline-formula><tex-math id="M5">\begin{document}$ R_{n} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> ranged from 2.37 to 4.91, and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M6">\begin{document}$ R_{e} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> decreased gradually from 4.83 on December 8, 2019 to 0.31 on March 8, 2020, reaching 1.40 on January 23, 2020, when the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan. We further concluded that the total number of infections, including asymptomatic infections, was approximately 301, 804 as of March 8, 2020, in Wuhan, China. In particular, this article proposes a dynamic method to distinguish the impact of natural factors and human interventions on the development of the pandemic, and provides a theoretical basis for fighting the global COVID-19 pandemic.</p>