The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team. The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) in China./ 新型冠状病毒肺炎流行病学特征分析

Objective An outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China has spread quickly nationwide Here, we report results of a descriptive, exploratory analysis of all cases diagnosed as of February 11, 2020 Methods All COVID-19 cases reported through February 11, 2020 were extracted from China’s Infectious Disease Information System Analyses included: 1) summary of patient characteristics;2) examination of age distributions and sex ratios;3) calculation of case fatality and mortality rates;4) geo-temporal analysis of viral spread;5) epidemiological curve construction;and 6) subgroup analysis Results A total of 72 314 patient records—44 672 (61 8%) confirmed cases, 16 186 (22 4%) suspected cases, 10567 (14 6%) clinical diagnosed cases (Hubei only), and 889 asymptomatic cases (1 2%)—contributed data for the analysis Among confirmed cases, most were aged 30–79 years (86 6%), diagnosed in Hubei (74 7%), and considered mild (80 9%) A total of 1 023 deaths occurred among confirmed cases for an overall case-fatality rate of 2 3% The COVID-19 spread outward from Hubei sometime after December 2019 and by February 11, 2020, 1 386 counties across all 31 provinces were affected The epidemic curve of onset of symptoms peaked in January 23–26, then began to decline leading up to February 11 A total of 1 716 health workers have become infected and 5 have died (0 3%) Conclusions The COVID-19 epidemic has spread very quickly It only took 30 days to expand from Hubei to the rest of Mainland China With many people returning from a long holiday, China needs to prepare for the possible rebound of the epidemic