Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgement

References

Abstract

The basic reproduction number of an infectious agent is the average number of infections one case can generate over the course of the infectious period, in a naïve, uninfected population. It is well-known that the estimation of this number may vary due to several methodological issues, including different assumptions and choice of parameters, utilized models, used datasets and estimation period. With the spreading of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection, the reproduction number has been found to vary, reflecting the dynamics of transmission of the coronavirus outbreak as well as the case reporting rate. Due to significant variations in the control strategies, which have been changing over time, and thanks to the introduction of detection technologies that have been rapidly improved, enabling to shorten the time from infection/symptoms onset to diagnosis, leading to faster confirmation of the new coronavirus cases, our previous estimations on the transmission risk of the 2019-nCoV need to be revised. By using time-dependent contact and diagnose rates, we refit our previously proposed dynamics transmission model to the data available until January 29th, 2020 and re-estimated the effective daily reproduction ratio that better quantifies the evolution of the interventions. We estimated when the effective daily reproduction ratio has fallen below 1 and when the epidemics will peak. Our updated findings suggest that the best measure is persistent and strict self-isolation. The epidemics will continue to grow, and can peak soon with the peak time depending highly on the public health interventions practically implemented.

Introduction

Coronaviruses are a group of enveloped viruses with a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA and viral particles resembling a crown e from which the name derives. They belong to the order of Nidovirales, family of Coronaviridae, and subfamily of Orthocoronavirinae (Carlos, Dela Cruz, Cao, Pasnick, & Jamil, 2020). They can affect mammals, including humans, causing generally mild infectious disorders, sporadically leading to severe outbreaks clusters, such as those generated by the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome” (SARS) virus in 2003 in mainland China, and by the “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” (MERS) virus in 2012 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in 2015 in South Korea (Gralinski & Menachery, 2020).

Currently, there exist no vaccines or anti-viral treatments officially approved for the prevention or management of the disease. Anti-retroviral drugs belonging to the class of protease inhibitors, including Lopinavir and Ritonavir, usually utilized for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, seem to exert anti-viral effects against coronaviruses. GS-734 (Remdesivir), a nucleotide analogue pro-drug, originally developed against the Ebola and the Marburg viruses, has been recently suggested to be effective also against coronaviruses. Other potential pharmaceuticals include nucleoside analogues, neuraminidase inhibitors, and RNA synthesis inhibitors. Also, Umifenovir (Abidol), used for treating severe influenza cases, anti-inflammatory drugs and EK1 peptide have been proposed as possible drugs against coronaviruses (Lu, 2020)