An international team of scientists from the United States, France, China and Hong Kong was able to identify how quickly SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 disease, can spread, a factor that may help public health officials in their efforts at containment. They found that time between cases in a chain of transmission is less than a week and that more than 10% of patients are infected by somebody who has the virus but does not yet have symptoms.
This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, also known as 2019-nCoV, isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Image credit: NIAID.
To measure what’s called the serial interval of the virus, scientists look at the time it takes for symptoms to appear in two people with the virus: the person who infects another, and the infected second person.
University of Texas at Austin’s Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers and colleagues found that the average serial interval for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in China was approximately 4 days. This also is among the first studies to estimate the rate of asymptomatic transmission.
The speed of an epidemic depends on two things — how many people each case infects and how long it takes cases to spread.
The first quantity is called the reproduction number; the second is the serial interval.
The short serial interval of COVID-19 means emerging outbreaks will grow quickly and could be difficult to stop.
“Ebola, with a serial interval of several weeks, is much easier to contain than influenza, with a serial interval of only a few days,” Professor Meyers said.
“Public health responders to Ebola outbreaks have much more time to identify and isolate cases before they infect others.”
“The data suggest that this coronavirus may spread like the flu. That means we need to move quickly and aggressively to curb the emerging threat.”
Professor Meyers and co-authors examined more than 450 infection case reports from 93 cities in China and found the strongest evidence yet that people without symptoms must be transmitting the virus, known as pre-symptomatic transmission.
According to the paper, more than 1 in 10 infections were from people who had the virus but did not yet feel sick.
Previously, scientists had some uncertainty about asymptomatic transmission with the coronavirus.
This new evidence could provide guidance to public health officials on how to contain the spread of the disease.
“This provides evidence that extensive control measures including isolation, quarantine, school closures, travel restrictions and cancellation of mass gatherings may be warranted. Asymptomatic transmission definitely makes containment more difficult,” Professor Meyers said.
“With hundreds of new cases emerging around the world every day, the data may offer a different picture over time. Infection case reports are based on people’s memories of where they went and whom they had contact with. If health officials move quickly to isolate patients, that may also skew the data.”
“Our findings are corroborated by instances of silent transmission and rising case counts in hundreds of cities worldwide. This tells us that COVID-19 outbreaks can be elusive and require extreme measures.”
The findings appear in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
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Z. Du et al. 2020. Risk for transportation of 2019 novel coronavirus disease from Wuhan to other cities in China. Emerg Infect Dis 26 (5); doi: 10.3201/eid2605.200146
This article is based on text provided by the University of Texas at Austin.
