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Transmission dynamics of COVID-19 among index case family clusters in Beijing, China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2020

Ying Cao
Affiliation:
Center of Liver Diseases, Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
Yueh Wang
Affiliation:
Biostatistics, Data Sciences, Safety & Regulatory, Research & Development Solutions, IQVIA, Taibei, Taiwan
Aritra Das
Affiliation:
Epidemiology and Outcomes Research, Real World Solutions, IQVIA, Haryana, India
Calvin Q. Pan
Affiliation:
Center of Liver Diseases, Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
Wen Xie*
Affiliation:
Center of Liver Diseases, Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
*
Author for correspondence: Wen Xie, E-mail: wenxie6218@163.com
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Abstract

The outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) impacts public health dramatically around the world. The demographic characteristics, exposure history, dates of illness onset and dates of confirmed diagnosis were collected from the data of 24 family clusters from Beijing. The characteristics of the cases and the estimated key epidemiologic time-to-event distributions were described. The basic reproductive number (R0) was calculated. Among 89 confirmed COVID-19 patients from 24 family clusters, the median age was 38.0 years and 43.8% were male. The median of incubation period was 5.08 days (95% confidence interval (CI) 4.17–6.21). The median of serial interval was 6.00 days (95% CI 5.00–7.00). The basic reproductive number (R0) was 2.06 (95% CI 2.02–2.08). The median of onset-to-care-seeking days and the median of onset-to-hospital admission days were significantly reduced after 23 January 2020, which implied the enhanced public health awareness among families. With epidemic containment measures in place, the results can inform health authorities about possible extent of epidemic transmission within families. Furthermore, following initiation of interventions, public health measures are not only important for curbing the epidemic spread at the community level but also improve health seeking behaviour at the individual level.

Information

Type
Original Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Cumulative incident cases by 10 days since first infection.

Figure 1

Fig. 2. Serial interval empirical distribution.

Figure 2

Fig. 3. Incubation period distribution (fitted using log-normal distribution).

Figure 3

Fig. 4. Distributions of onset-to-care-seeking interval (fitted using Weibull distribution).

Figure 4

Fig. 5. Distributions of onset-to-hospital admission interval (fitted using Weibull distribution).

Figure 5

Table 1. Demographics of family clusters with COVID-19 in Beijing as of 14 February 2020