Subcritical Transmission in the Early Stage of COVID-19 in Korea

Yong Sul Won, Jong-Hoon Kim, Chi Young Ahn and Hyojung Lee
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Yong Sul Won: National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 70, Yuseong-daero 1689 beon-gil, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34047, Korea
Jong-Hoon Kim: International Vaccine Institute, SNU Research Park, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea
Chi Young Ahn: National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 70, Yuseong-daero 1689 beon-gil, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34047, Korea
Hyojung Lee: National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 70, Yuseong-daero 1689 beon-gil, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34047, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 3, 1-10

Abstract: While the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has been ongoing in Korea since January 2020, there were limited transmissions during the early stages of the outbreak. In the present study, we aimed to provide a statistical characterization of COVID-19 transmissions that led to this small outbreak. We collated the individual data of the first 28 confirmed cases reported from 20 January to 10 February 2020. We estimated key epidemiological parameters such as reporting delay (i.e., time from symptom onset to confirmation), incubation period, and serial interval by fitting probability distributions to the data based on the maximum likelihood estimation. We also estimated the basic reproduction number ( R 0 ) using the renewal equation, which allows for the transmissibility to differ between imported and locally transmitted cases. There were 16 imported and 12 locally transmitted cases, and secondary transmissions per case were higher for the imported cases than the locally transmitted cases (nine vs. three cases). The mean reporting delays were estimated to be 6.76 days (95% CI: 4.53, 9.28) and 2.57 days (95% CI: 1.57, 4.23) for imported and locally transmitted cases, respectively. The mean incubation period was estimated to be 5.53 days (95% CI: 3.98, 8.09) and was shorter than the mean serial interval of 6.45 days (95% CI: 4.32, 9.65). The R 0 was estimated to be 0.40 (95% CI: 0.16, 0.99), accounting for the local and imported cases. The fewer secondary cases and shorter reporting delays for the locally transmitted cases suggest that contact tracing of imported cases was effective at reducing further transmissions, which helped to keep R 0 below one and the overall transmissions small.

Keywords: coronavirus; COVID-19; statistical model; serial interval; incubation period; pre-symptomatic transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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