Effective containment explains subexponential growth in recent confirmed COVID-19 cases in China

Abstract

Containment works National governments have taken different approaches in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ranging from draconian quarantines to laissez-faire mitigation strategies. In data from China collected in February 2020, Maier and Brockmann noticed that, unexpectedly, the epidemic did not take off exponentially. Nonexponential spread occurs when the supply of susceptible individuals is depleted on a time scale comparable to the infectious period of the virus. The results of the authors' modeling approach indicate that the public response to the epidemic plus containment policies were becoming effective despite the initial increase in confirmed cases. Science , this issue p. 742