The new coronavirus may have infected at least 1 in 20 people in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the global outbreak, by the time it peaks in coming weeks, according to scientists modeling its spread.
The typically bustling megacity, where the so-called 2019-nCoV virus emerged late last year, has been in lockdown since Jan. 23, restricting the movement of 11 million people. Trends in reported cases in Wuhan so far broadly support the mathematical modeling the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is using to predict the epidemic's transmission dynamics.
"Assuming current trends continue, we're still projecting a mid-to-late-February peak" in Wuhan, said Adam Kucharski, an associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology, in an email Sunday. "There's a lot of uncertainty, so I'm cautious about picking out a single value for the peak, but it's possible based on current data we might see a peak prevalence over 5 percent."