Understanding Unreported Cases in the COVID-19 Epidemic Outbreak in Wuhan, China, and the Importance of Major Public Health Interventions

1An epidemic outbreak of a new human coronavirus, termed the novel coronavirus COVID-19, has occurred in Wuhan, China. The first cases occurred in early December, 2019, and, by 29 January 2020, more than 7000 cases had been reported in China. Early reports advise that COVID-19 transmission may occur from an infectious individual, who is not yet symptomatic. Evidently, such asymptomatic infectious cases are not reported to medical authorities. For epidemic influenza outbreaks, reported cases are typically only a fraction of the total number of the symptomatic infectious individuals. For the current epidemic in Wuhan, it is likely that intensive efforts by Chinese public health authorities have reduced the number of unreported cases.

2Our objective is to develop a mathematical model, which recovers from data of reported cases, the number of unreported cases for the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan. For this epidemic, a modeling approach has been developed in, which did not consider unreported cases. Our work continues the investigation in of the fundamental problem of parameter identification in mathematical epidemic models. We address the following fundamental issues concerning this epidemic: How will the epidemic evolve in Wuhan with respect to the number of reported cases and unreported cases? How will the number of unreported cases influence the severity of the epidemic? How will public health measures, such as isolation, quarantine, and public closings, mitigate the final size of the epidemic?

3Our model consists of the following system of ordinary differential equations: Here, is time in days, is the beginning date of the epidemic, is the number of individuals susceptible to infection at time t, is the number of asymptomatic infectious individuals at time t, is the number of reported symptomatic infectious individuals (i.e., symptomatic infectious with sever symptoms) at time t, and is the number of unreported symptomatic infectious individuals (i.e., symptomatic infectious with mild symptoms) at time t. This system is supplemented by initial data

4Figure 1 is the flow chart of the model (1). The parameters of the model are listed in Table 1.

5We use three sets of reported data to model the epidemic in Wuhan: First, data from the Chinese CDC for mainland China (Table 2), second, data from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission for Hubei Province (Table 3), and third, data from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission for Wuhan Municipality (Table 4). These data vary but represent the epidemic transmission in Wuhan, from which almost all the cases originated in the larger regions.

6For influenza disease outbreaks, the parameters,,,,, as well as the initial conditions,, and, are usually unknown. Our goal is to identify them from specific time data of reported symptomatic infectious cases. To identify the unreported asymptomatic infectious cases, we assume that the cumulative reported symptomatic infectious cases at time t consist of a constant fraction along time of the total number of symptomatic infectious cases up to time t. In other words, we assume that the removal rate takes the following form:, where is the removal rate of reported symptomatic infectious individuals, and is the removal rate of unreported symptomatic infectious individuals due to all other causes, such as mild symptom, or other reasons.

7The cumulative number of reported symptomatic infectious cases at time t, denoted by, is Our method is the following: We assume that has the following special form: We evaluate using the reported case data in Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4. We obtain the model starting time of the epidemic from (4): We fix, which corresponds to the total population of Wuhan. We assume that the variation in is small during the period considered, and we fix. By using the method in Section 4, we can estimate the parameters and the initial conditions and from the cumulative reported cases given (4). We then construct numerical simulations and compare them with data.

8The evaluation of,,, and, using the cumulative reported symptomatic infectious cases in Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4, is shown in Table 5 and in Figure 2 below.

9According to Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4, the time will correspond to 31 December. Thus, in Table 5, the value means that the starting time of the epidemic is 5 January, the value means that the starting time of the epidemic is 28 December, and means that the starting time of the epidemic is 26 December.

10As long as the number of reported cases follows (1), we can predict the future values of. For,, and, we obtain The actual number of reported cases for China are 8163 confirmed for 30 January, 11,791 confirmed for 30 January, and 14,380 confirmed for 1 February. Thus, the exponential formula (4) overestimates the number reported after day 30.

11From now on, we fix the fraction f of symptomatic infectious cases that are reported. We assume that between and of infectious cases are reported. Thus, f varies between and 1. We assume, and the average time during which the patients are asymptomatic infectious varies between one day and seven days. We assume that, the average time during which a patient is symptomatic infectious, varies between one day and seven days. Thus, we fix. Since f and are known, we can compute Moreover, by following the approach described in the supplementary information, we should have and By using the approach described in the supplementary material, the basic reproductive number for model (1) is given by By using and (7), we obtain

12We can find multiple values of, and f which provide a good fit for the data. For application of our model,, and f must vary in a reasonable range. For the corona virus COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan at its current stage, the values of, and f are not known. From preliminary information, we use the values

13By using formula (9) for the basic reproduction number, we obtain from the data in Table 2 that Using model (1) and the values in Table 5, we plot the graph of, and the data for the confirmed cumulated cases in Figure 3, according to Table 2 for China, Table 3 for Hubei, and Table 4 for Wuhan. We observe from these figures that the data for China and Hubei fit the model (1), but the data for Wuhan do not fit the model (1) because the model (4) is not a good model for the data for Wuhan in Table 4. The data for Wuhan do not fit an exponential function.

14In what follows, we plot the graphs of,, and for Wuhan by using model (1). We define the turning point as the time at which the red curve (i.e., the curve of the non-cumulated reported infectious cases) reaches its maximum value. For example, in the figure below, the turning point is day 54, which corresponds to 23 February for Wuhan.

15In the following, we take into account the fact that very strong isolation measures have been imposed for all China since 23 January. Specifically, since 23 January, families in China are required to stay at home. In order to take into account such a public intervention, we assume that the transmission of COVID-19 from infectious to susceptible individuals stopped after 25 January. Therefore, we consider the following model: for, where

16The figure below takes into account the public health measures, such as isolation, quarantine, and public closings, which correspond to models (10) and (11). By comparison of Figure 4a with Figure 5, we note that these measures greatly mitigate the final size of the epidemic, and shift the turning point about 24 days before the turning point without these measures.

17An epidemic outbreak of a new human coronavirus COVID-19 has occurred in Wuhan, China. For this outbreak, the unreported cases and the disease transmission rate are not known. In order to recover these values from reported medical data, we present the mathematical model (1) for outbreak diseases. By knowledge of the cumulative reported symptomatic infectious cases, and assuming (1) the fraction f of asymptomatic infectious that become reported symptomatic infectious cases, (2) the average time asymptomatic infectious are asymptomatic, and (3) the average time symptomatic infectious remain infectious, we estimate the epidemiological parameters in model (1). We then make numerical simulations of the model (1) to prodict forward in time the severity of the epidemic. We observe that public health measures, such as isolation, quarantine, and public closings, greatly reduce the final size of the epidemic, and make the turning point much earlier than without these measures. We observe that the predictive capability of model (1) requires valid estimates of the parameters f,, and, which depend on the input of medical and biological epidemiologists. Our results can contribute to the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan.

18As a consequence of our study, we note that public health measures, such as isolation, quarantine, and public closings, greatly reduce the final size of this epidemic, and make the turning point much earlier than without these measures. With our method, we fix,, and f and get the same turning point for the three data sets in Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4. We choose, which means that around of cases are reported in the model, since cases are very well documented in China. Thus, we only assume that a small fraction,, were not reported. This assumption may be confirmed later on.

19We also vary the parameters,, and f, and we do not observe a strong variation of the turning point. Nevertheless, the number of reported cases are very sensitive to the data sets, as shown in the figures. Formula (4) for is very descriptive until 26 January for the reported case data for China and Hubei but is not reasonable for Wuhan data. This suggests that the turning point is very robust, while the number of cases is very sensitive. We can find multiple values of,, and f that provide a good fit for the data. This means that,, and f should also be evaluated using other methods. The values days and days are taken from information concerning earlier corona viruses, and are used now by medical authorities.

20The predictive capability of models (1) and (10) requires valid estimates of the parameters f (fraction of asymptomatic infectious that become reported as symptomatic infectious), the parameter (average time asymptomatic infectious are asymptomatic), and the parameter (average time symptomatic infectious remain infectious). In Figure 4, we graph as a function of f and for the data in Table 2, to illustrate the importance of these values in the evolution of the epidemic. The accuracy of these values depend on the input of medical and biological epidemiologists.

21In influenza epidemics, the fraction f of reported cases may be significantly increased by public health reporting measures, with greater efforts to identify all current cases. Our model reveals the impact of an increase in this fraction f in the value of, as evident in Figure 6 above, for the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan.

22In the following the parameters and are fixed.

23Step 1: Since f and, we know that

24Step 2: By using Equation (3), we obtain and and therefore Moreover, by using (12) at,

25Step 3: In order to evaluate the parameters of the model, we replace by on the right-hand side of (1) (which is equivalent to neglecting the variation of susceptibles due to the epidemic, which is consistent with the fact that grows exponentially). Therefore, it remains to estimate and in the following system: By using the first equation, we obtain and therefore, by using (13), we must have so, by substituting these expressions into (15), we obtain

26Here, we fix τ in such a way that the value becomes the dominant eigenvalue of the linearized Equation (21) and is the positve eigenvector associated with this dominant eigenvalue. Thus, we apply implicitly the Perron–Frobenius theorem. Moreover, the exponentially growing solution that we consider (which is starting very close to (0,0)) follows the direction of the positive eigenvector associated with the dominant eigenvalue.

27By dividing the first equation of (16) by we obtain and hence By using the second equation of (16), we obtain By using (17) and (18), we obtain By using (18), we can compute

28In this section, we apply results in Diekmann, Heesterbeek, and Metz and Van den Driessche and Watmough. The linearized equation of the infectious part of the system is given by The corresponding matrix is and the matrix A can be rewritten as where Therefore, the next generation matrix is which is a Leslie matrix, and the basic reproductive number becomes By using (19), we obtain and, by using, we obtain