Epidemic Growth and Reproduction Number for the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship from January 20 to February 19, 2020: A Preliminary Data-Driven Analysis

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess ship has caused over 600 (still increasing) cases as of February 19, 2020. By using the growing process model, we demonstrated that this Diamond Princess cruise outbreak implies a short serial interval of COVID-19. Hence, timely contact tracing and effectively quarantine were crucial to shutoff the COVID-19 transmission.

Funding: DH was supported by General Research Fund (Grant Number 15205119) of the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong, China. WW was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 61672013) and Huaian Key Laboratory for Infectious Diseases Control and Prevention (Grant Number HAP201704), Huaian, Jiangsu, China.

Declaration of Interest: The authors declared no competing interests.

Ethical Approval: The data were collected via public domain, and thus neither ethical approval nor individual consent was applicable.

Keywords: novel coronavirus disease; serial interval; reproduction number; statistical analysis; Diamond Princess ship

JEL Classification: I1