Assessment of the prevention and control effects on the outbreak of COVID-19 in Hunan, China: Based on a SEIAR Dynamic Model

Abstract Background A new infectious disease, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been first reported during December 2019 in Wuhan, China, cases have been exported to other cities and abroad rapidly. Hunan is the neighboring province of Wuhan, a series of preventive and control measures were taken to control the outbreak of COVID-19. It is critical to assess these measures on the epidemic progression for the benefit of global expectation.Method: A Susceptible-exposed-infections/asymptomatic-removed (SEIAR) model was established to evaluate the effect of preventive measures. Berkeley Madonna 8.3.18 was employed for the model simulation and prediction, and the curve-fitting problem was solved by Runge-Kutta fourth-order method.Results In this study, we found that Rt was 2.71 from January 21 to 27 and reduced to 0.21 after January 27, 2020. If measures have not been fully launched, patients in Hunan would reach the maximum (8.96 million) on March 25, 2020, and end in about 208 days; when measures have been fully launched, patients in Hunan would just reach the maximum (699) on February 9, 2020, and end in about 56 days, which was very closed to the actual situation.Conclusion The outbreak of COVID-19 in Hunan, China has been well controlled under current measures, full implementation of measures could reduce the peak value, short the time to peak and duration of the outbreak effectively, which could provide a reference for controlling of COVID-19 for other countries.