The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak has been treated as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. This work made an early prediction of the 2019-nCoV outbreak in China based on a simple mathematical model and limited epidemiological data. Combing characteristics of the historical epidemic, we found part of the released data is unreasonable. Through ruling out the unreasonable data, the model predictions exhibit that the number of the cumulative 2019-nCoV cases may reach 76,000 to 230,000, with a peak of the unrecovered infectives (22,000-74,000) occurring in late February to early March. After that, the infected cases will rapidly monotonically decrease until early May to late June, when the 2019-nCoV outbreak will fade out. Strong anti-epidemic measures may reduce the cumulative infected cases by 40%-49%. The improvement of medical care can also lead to about one-half transmission decrease and effectively shorten the duration of the 2019-nCoV. The flow diagram of early prediction of the 2019-nCoV. The early-stage epidemiological data is firstly analyzed to rule out unreasonable part with considering historical epidemic. The SIR model is then simplified to reduce the number of parameters and thus data requirement. The early prediction is finally obtained via integrating the simplified model with parameter estimations based on objective analysis.
【저자키워드】 prediction, Novel coronavirus, mathematical model, infection rate, Epidemic transmission, removal rate, 【초록키워드】 2019-nCoV, Transmission, China, 2019 novel coronavirus, Epidemic, Characteristics, outbreak, epidemiological data, concern, Care, Analysis, Emergency, World Health Organization, measure, cumulative, parameter, infective, Public, decrease, analyzed, treated, reduce, released, mathematical, infected case, Strong, Combing, flow diagram, 【제목키워드】 China, Model, novel, simple, mainland,