Breaking News! Researchers From Sweden, Germany and China Say WHO Has Underestimated Transmissibility Of Coronavirus
Source: Thailand Coronavirus News Feb 14, 2020 4 years, 8 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes ago
According to a new research lead by Swedish researchers from the Umeå University in Sweden along with collaboration with researchers from Heidelberg in Germany and Zhangzhou in China, the
coronavirus probably has a stronger ability to spread than the World Health Organization has estimated so far.
The researchers conducted a detailed analysis and review of previous studies of the
coronavirus' transmissibility performed by various other entities including themselves.
Dr Joacim Rocklöv, a Professor of Sustainable Health at Umeå University and one of the authors of the study told
Thailand Medical News, "Our review shows that the
coronavirus is at least as transmissible as the SARS virus. And that says a great deal about the seriousness of the situation."
WHO or the World Health Organization estimates that the
coronavirus has a transmissibility, expressed as a reproduction number, of between 1.4 and 2.5.
Typically, a reproduction number is a measurement of how many people a contaminated person transmits the virus to in a previously healthy population. The higher the number, the more transferable the virus is and the higher the risk for rapid spread. When the reproduction number falls below 1.0, the epidemic is likely to die out.
A team of researchers from Umeå in Sweden, Heidelberg in Germany, and Zhangzhou in China have carried out a review of several scientific studies of the novel
coronavirus, COVD-19. In total, the researchers found 12 studies of sufficiently high quality.
The research studies consisted of estimations of the growth rate based upon the cases observed in the Chinese population, and based upon statistical and mathematical methods.
The initial studies of the coronavirus indicated a relatively low transmissibility. Thereafter, the transmissibility rose rapidly to stabilise between 2–3 in the most recent studies.
The reproduction number in the studies summed up to a mean of 3.28, and a median of 2.79, which is significantly higher than the World Health Organization's estimation of 1.4–2.5.
Dr Joacim Rocklöv further commented, "When looking at the development of the
coronavirus epidemic, reality seems to correspond well to or even exceed the highest epidemic growth in our calculations. Despite all intervention and control activities, the new
coronavirus has already spread to a significantly higher extent than SARS did.”
The study is published in the Journal of Travel Medicine.
Reference : Ying Liu et al. The reproductive number of COVID-19 is higher compared to SARS
coronavirus, Journal of Travel Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1093/jtm
/taaa021
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