We currently do not know where 2019-nCoV falls on the scale of human-to-human transmissibility. But it is safe to assume that if this virus transmits efficiently, its seemingly lower pathogenicity as compared with SARS, possibly combined with super-spreader events in specific cases, could allow large-scale spread. In this manner, a virus that poses a low health threat on the individual level can pose a high risk on the population level, with the potential to cause disruptions of global public health systems and economic losses. This possibility warrants the current aggressive response aimed at tracing and diagnosing every infected patient and thereby breaking the transmission chain of 2019-nCoV.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2000929
Thanks for the updates
“It is unclear at the current time whether this outbreak can be contained within China,” said Dr Neil Ferguson, an infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London who co-led one of the studies.
Dr Ferguson’s team suggest as many as 4,000 people in Wuhan were already infected by Jan 18 and that on average each case was infecting two or three others.
A second study by researchers at Britain’s Lancaster University also calculated the contagion rate at 2.5 new people on average being infected by each person already infected.
“Should the epidemic continue unabated in Wuhan, we predict (it) will be substantially larger by Feb 4,” the scientists wrote.
They estimated that the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the outbreak began in December will alone have around 190,000 cases of infection by Feb 4, and that “infection will be established in other Chinese cities, and importations to other countries will be more frequent”.
https://www.todayonline.com/world/studies-show-person-infected-wuhan-virus-passes-it-2-3-others
i.e. R0 = 2 - 3 or similar to influenza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number