Assessment of transmissibility and measures effectiveness of SARS in 8 regions, China, 2002-2003

Jia Rui; Huimin Qu; Shuo Zhang; Hong Liu; Hongjie Wei; Buasiyamu Abudunaibi; Kangguo Li; Yunkang Zhao; Qiao Liu; Kang Fang; Laurent Gavotte; Roger Frutos; Tianmu Chen

doi:10.3389/fcimb.2023.1212473

Assessment of transmissibility and measures effectiveness of SARS in 8 regions, China, 2002-2003

Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2023 Aug 10:13:1212473. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2023.1212473. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jia Rui^{1

2

3}, Huimin Qu¹, Shuo Zhang¹, Hong Liu¹, Hongjie Wei¹, Buasiyamu Abudunaibi¹, Kangguo Li¹, Yunkang Zhao¹, Qiao Liu¹, Kang Fang¹, Laurent Gavotte², Roger Frutos³, Tianmu Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Molecular Vaccinology and Molecular Diagnostics, School of Public Health, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China.
² Espace-Dev, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
³ French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), URM 17, Intertryp, Montpellier, France.

Abstract

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a form of atypical pneumonia which took hundreds of lives when it swept the world two decades ago. The pathogen of SARS was identified as SARS-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and it was mainly transmitted in China during the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003. SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 have emerged from the SARS metapopulation of viruses. However, they gave rise to two different disease dynamics, a limited epidemic, and an uncontrolled pandemic, respectively. The characteristics of its spread in China are particularly noteworthy. In this paper, the unique characteristics of time, space, population distribution and transmissibility of SARS for the epidemic were discussed in detail.

Methods: We adopted sliding average method to process the number of reported cases per day. An SEIAR transmission dynamics model, which was the first to take asymptomatic group into consideration and applied indicators of R ₀, R_eff, R_t to evaluate the transmissibility of SARS, and further illustrated the control effectiveness of interventions for SARS in 8 Chinese cities.

Results: The R ₀ for SARS in descending order was: Tianjin city (R ₀ = 8.249), Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shanxi Province, Hebei Province, Beijing City, Guangdong Province, Taiwan Province, and Hong Kong. R ₀ of the SARS epidemic was generally higher in Mainland China than in Hong Kong and Taiwan Province (Mainland China: R ₀ = 6.058 ± 1.703, Hong Kong: R ₀ = 2.159, Taiwan: R ₀ = 3.223). All cities included in this study controlled the epidemic successfully (R_eff<1) with differences in duration. R_t in all regions showed a downward trend, but there were significant fluctuations in Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Taiwan Province compared to other areas.

Conclusion: The SARS epidemic in China showed a trend of spreading from south to north, i.e., Guangdong Province and Beijing City being the central regions, respectively, and from there to the surrounding areas. In contrast, the SARS epidemic in the central region did not stir a large-scale transmission. There were also significant differences in transmissibility among eight regions, with R₀ significantly higher in the northern region than that in the southern region. Different regions were able to control the outbreak successfully in differences time.

Keywords: SARS; basic reproduction number; control measures; effective reproduction number; time-varying reproduction number; transmissibility.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
China / epidemiology
Hong Kong / epidemiology
Humans
SARS-CoV-2
Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus*

Grants and funding

This project was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China [2021YFC2301604], Self-supporting Program of Guangzhou Laboratory [SRPG22-007]