Countries at Risk from the Coronavirus Pandemic Identified

American and British scientists have published their expert assessments on the risk of the spread of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV originating from China. The results can be found on the preprint portal medRxiv.org.

Researchers from the Center for Medical Informatics, Computing, and Statistics at Lancaster University, the Medical Research Center at the University of Glasgow (UK), and the Institute for Biology and New Pathogens at the University of Florida (USA) have released their evaluations of the epidemiological parameters of the 2019-nCoV epidemic. According to scientists' estimates, the basic reproductive rate of the infection, which is the average number of secondary cases per infected individual, is between 3.6 and 4.0. The World Health Organization has assessed this figure at a level of 1.4 to 2.5.

For comparison, the basic reproductive number for influenza is between two and three, and for atypical pneumonia in the 2000s, it was about three. In any case, with such a high mortality rate reported for the new coronavirus, this sounds quite alarming.

The model presented by the authors predicts that by January 21, there should be 11,341 confirmed cases in Wuhan alone. This indicates that the current detection rate of the disease is only 5.1 percent of the actual number of infections. If anti-epidemic measures remain as they are now, the number of infected individuals in Wuhan could exceed 190,000 in 14 days, leading to major outbreaks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Chengdu.

Countries at risk include Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, reported RIA Novosti.