Does lock-down of Wuhan effectively restrict early geographic spread of novel coronavirus epidemic during chunyun in China? A spatial model study

• Published in: BMC public health Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 825 - 8
• Main Authors: Hu, Yi, Kong, Lingcai, Yao, Tong, Chen, Xinda, Du, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central 29.04.2021; BMC
• Subjects: China; China - epidemiology; Chunyun; Cities; Communicable Disease Control; Coronavirus; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disease control; Disease transmission; Epidemics; Geographic spread; Geographical distribution; Holidays & special occasions; Humans; Laboratories; Lock-down; Municipalities; Population; Population studies; SARS-CoV-2; Travel; Viral diseases; China; Cities; COVID-19; Lock-down; Chunyun; Coronavirus; Geographic spread; China
• ISSN: 1471-2458; 1471-2458
• DOI: 10.1186/s12889-021-10837-2

Prior to Wuhan lock-down in 2020, chunyun, the largest population mobility on this planet, had begun. We quantified impact of Wuhan lock-down on COVID-19 spread during chunyun across the nation. During the period of January 1 to February 9, 2020, a total of 40,278 confirmed COVID-19 cases from 319 municipalities in mainland China were considered in this study. The cross-coupled meta-population methods were employed using between-city Baidu migration index. We modelled four scenarios of geographic spread of COVID-19 including the presence of both chunyun and lock-down (baseline); lock-down without chunyun (scenario 1); chunyun without lock-down (scenario 2); and the absence of both chunyun and lock-down (scenario 3). Compared with the baseline, scenario 1 resulted in 3.84% less cases by February 9 while scenario 2 and 3 resulted in 20.22 and 32.46% more cases by February 9. The geographic distribution of cases revealed that chunyun facilitated the COVID-19 spread in the majority but not all cities, and the effectiveness of Wuhan lock-down was offset by chunyun. Impacts of Wuhan lock-down during chunyun on the COVID-19 spread demonstrated heterogenetic geographic patterns. Our results strongly supported the travel restriction as one of the effective responses and highlighted the importance of developing area-specific rather than universal countermeasures.