Preliminary estimation of the basic reproduction number of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China, from 2019 to 2020: A data-driven analysis in the early phase of the outbreak

Backgrounds An ongoing outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pneumonia hit a major city of China, Wuhan, December 2019 and subsequently reached other provinces/regions of China and countries. We present estimates of the basic reproduction number, R₀, of 2019-nCoV in the early phase of the outbreak.

Methods Accounting for the impact of the variations in disease reporting rate, we modelled the epidemic curve of 2019-nCoV cases time series, in mainland China from January 10 to January 24, 2020, through the exponential growth. With the estimated intrinsic growth rate (γ), we estimated R₀ by using the serial intervals (SI) of two other well-known coronavirus diseases, MERS and SARS, as approximations for the true unknown SI.

Findings The early outbreak data largely follows the exponential growth. We estimated that the mean R₀ ranges from 2.24 (95%CI: 1.96-2.55) to 3.58 (95%CI: 2.89-4.39) associated with 8-fold to 2-fold increase in the reporting rate. We demonstrated that changes in reporting rate substantially affect estimates of R₀.

Conclusion The mean estimate of R₀ for the 2019-nCoV ranges from 2.24 to 3.58, and significantly larger than 1. Our findings indicate the potential of 2019-nCoV to cause outbreaks.