High Contagiousness R0 value of 5.7

[NCC1701A]

Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R₀ value of 5.7

 

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article?deliveryName=USCDC_333-DM25287

[DaRoadrunner]

The world responded too late, it has gone pandemic. All we have is quarantine, social distancing and a mask. Fortunately, although easily transmitted, it appears to burn out with time. Judging from what we saw with China, the rest of the world is behind the curve and has a couple of months more before we get through this..... If we have not all gone stir crazy with lock-down by then.

[scubascuba3]

When the new numbers are announced daily they seem to indicate that cases mostly come from abroad rather than internal spread, if true....is a good sign, maybe the heat is killing the droplets after all

Edited April 8, 2020 by scubascuba3

[DrTuner]

Many models used in that paper. I'm a bit wary of how accurate they might be. That high an R0 doesn't seem to match what is currently happening outside China. I think the paper needs peer review.

 

 I any case, one can plug them in here for the population of Thailand and see what happens:

http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

 

Quote

In this study, we estimated several basic epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period (4.2 days), a time dependent duration from symptom onset to hospitalization (changing from 5.5 days in early January to 1.5 days in late January outside Hubei Province), and the time from symptom onset to death (16.1 days). By using 2 distinct approaches, we estimated the growth rate of the early outbreak in Wuhan to be 0.21–0.30 per day (a doubling time of 2.3–3.3 days), suggesting a much faster rate of spread than initially measured. This finding would have important implications for forecasting epidemic trajectories and the effect on healthcare systems as well as for evaluating the effectiveness of intervention strategies.

We found R0 is likely to be 5.7 given our current state of knowledge, with a broad 95% CI (3.8–8.9). 

 

It's unlikely the parameters are same in different areas of the world though. F. ex. in Alaska that's sparsely populated one might not even meet 5.7 people in a couple of weeks.

Edited April 8, 2020 by DrTuner