The positive impact of lockdown in Wuhan on containing the COVID-19 outbreak in China
By Hien Lau, Veria Khosrawipour, P. Kocbach, A. Mikołajczyk, Justyna Schubert, J. Bania, T. Khosrawipour. Journal of Travel Medicine, 2020
1,138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Background With its epicenter in Wuhan, China, the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO). Consequently, many countries have implemented flight restrictions to China. China itself has imposed a lockdown of the population of Wuhan as well as the entire Hubei province. However, whether these two enormous measures have led to significant changes in the spread of COVID-19 cases remains unclear. Methods We analyzed available data on the development of confirmed domestic and international COVID-19 cases before and after lockdown measures. We evaluated the correlation of domestic air traffic to the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and determined the growth curves of COVID-19 cases within China before and after lockdown as well as after changes in COVID-19 diagnostic criteria. Results Our findings indicate a significant increase in doubling time from 2 days (95% Confidence Interval, CI): 1.9–2.6), to 4 days (95% CI: 3.5–4.3), after imposing lockdown. A further increase is detected after changing diagnostic and testing methodology to 19.3 (95% CI: 15.1–26.3), respectively. Moreover, the correlation between domestic air traffic and COVID-19 spread became weaker following lockdown (before lockdown: r = 0.98, p < 0.05 vs. after lockdown: r = 0.91, p = NS). Conclusions A significantly decreased growth rate and increased doubling time of cases was observed, which is most likely due to Chinese lockdown measures. A more stringent confinement of people in high risk areas seem to have a potential to slow down the spread of COVID-19.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Modeling and Simulation, Oncology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1877f559552a8fd406a2f350641aef550133b517
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Citations in the corpus
- Risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community: a prospective cohort study (2020, positive): “Because this work requires close personal exposure to patients with the virus, frontline HCWs are at high risk of infection, which may contribute to further spread.(13,14) Initial regional estimates suggest frontline HCWs may account for 10-20% of all diagnoses,(15-17) which may be an underestimate ”
- The potential of virtual tourism in the recovery of tourism industry during the COVID-19 pandemic (2021, background): “These measures have been proved effective in reducing and slowing down the transmission of the coronavirus in China and elsewhere (Cowling et al., 2020; Lai et al., 2020; Lau et al., 2020).”
- The Efficacy of Lockdown Against COVID-19: A Cross-Country Panel Analysis (2020, background): “Although both the WHO and previous literature focusing on the Chinese case [3, 4] have highlighted the importance and centrality of such measures in reducing the probability of contagion (and thus the related diffusion of the virus), the political debate appears to have been greatly influenced by th”
- Have traffic restrictions improved air quality? A shock from COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “have confirmed that large-scale city closures and traffic travel restrictions effectively reduce the transmission speed and scale of COVID-19 (Qiu et al., 2020; Chinazzi et al., 2020; Lau et al., 2020).”
- Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Supply Chains: Facts and Perspectives (2020, methodology): “According to an investigation by Dun & Bradstreet, at least five million companies around the world have one or more tier-2 suppliers in the Wuhan region [43].”