The Transmission, Infection Prevention, and Control during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: A Retrospective Study

Lifeng Zhang, Roy E. Welsch and Zhi Cao
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Lifeng Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of the Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
Roy E. Welsch: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Zhi Cao: Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA 02125, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: The first wave of COVID-19 in China began in December 2019. The outbreak was quickly and effectively controlled through strict infection prevention and control with multipronged measures. By the end of March 2020, the outbreak had basically ended. Therefore, there are relatively complete and effective infection prevention and control (IPC) processes in China to curb virus transmission. Furthermore, there were two large-scale updates for the daily reports by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China in the early stage of the pandemic. We retrospectively studied the transmission characteristics and IPC of COVID-19 in China. Additionally, we analyzed and modeled the data in the two revisions. We found that most cases were limited to Hubei Province, especially in Wuhan, and the mortality rate was lower in non-Wuhan areas. We studied the two revisions and utilized the proposed transmission model to revise the daily confirmed cases at the beginning of the pandemic in Wuhan. Moreover, we estimated the cases and deaths for the same stage and analyzed the effect of IPC in China. The results show that strong and effective IPC with strict implementation was able to effectively and quickly control the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; transmission; infection prevention and control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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