ABSTRACT
Background Novel coronavirus COVID-19 has caused significant global outbreaks outside China. Many countries have closed their borders with China and performed obligate protective procedures, however, this disease was still rising worldwide. In this report, we aim to identify transmission patterns from China to other countries, along with describing the disease control situation of countries.
Methods We retrospectively collected information about infected cases with COVID-19 from WHO situation reports, official notification websites of health ministries and reliable local newspapers from each country. Descriptive and cluster analysis was performed to describe the transmission characteristics while the logistic regression test was used to estimate the risk factors for the occurrence of an infected individual with an unknown source.
Results A total of 446 infected cases were recorded from 24 countries outside China until 12 February 2020, with the number of reported infected cases were doubled every 3.08 ± 0.35 days (range from 2.6 to 3.9). Besides the spread from China, the transmission was originated from sub-endemic countries (Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, France, German). Out of 6 countries got occurrence of an infected individual with unknown source and possible potential factors contributed to this occurrence was a time of epidemic circulating, number of patients and number of clusters when the occurrence still has not happened, and notably, the unreported situation of Chinese tourists’ information.
Conclusions The situational reports of each country about COVID-19 should be more detailed mentioning the transmissions routes with keeping contact tracing of the unknown cases to increase the control of this disease.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
None.
Author Declarations
I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.
Yes
The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:
All data have been acquired from online sources and governments' websites without any direct contact data from patients
All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.
Yes
I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).
Yes
I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.
Yes
Data Availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- “SARS-CoV”
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.
- “MERS-CoV”
- Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.
- “SARS-CoV-2”
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.
- “WHO”
- World Health Organization.
- “ARDS”
- Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
- “CDC”
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention.
- “ProMed”
- An online news site for international society for infectious diseases.
- “USA”
- United States of America.
- “UK”
- United Kingdom.
- “UAE”
- United Arab Emirates.
- “PPE”
- Personal protective equipment.
- “NEJM”
- The New England Journal of Medicine Journal
- “JAMA”
- The Journal of the American Medical Association