Association of Public Health Interventions With the Epidemiology of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Wuhan, China

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging respiratory infectious disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which was first detected in early December 2019 in Wuhan, China. As of April 6, 2020, COVID-19 had quickly spread to the majority of countries worldwide, affected more than 1.1 million individuals, and caused nearly 63 000 deaths.¹ Although studies have described the clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19,^2-7 and a previous study has reported the early transmission dynamics of the first 425 confirmed cases in Wuhan,⁸ more recent data are required to illustrate the full spectrum of the epidemiological characteristics of the outbreak in the epicenter.