CityU public health expert assesses the risk of coronavirus outbreak in the coming two weeks based on different quarantine scenarios

We would like to invite you to cover the following event:

The novel coronavirus is raging around the world. Using mathematical modeling inspired from the model results reported by Imperial College London in the UK, together with various epidemic control parameters, Dr Sean Yuan Hsiang-yu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at CityU, will discuss the risk of the further outbreak of the disease over the coming two weeks. He will present his analysis of the effectiveness of quarantine measures, which includes the time gap between patients showing symptoms of the virus and the point of quarantine, plus the possibility of patients contacting others during the quarantine period. His study is based on the number of imported cases and local infections.

Dr Yuan's research interests lie in the areas of infectious disease modelling, evolutionary biology and bioinformatics. He is interested in the transfer of knowledge from basic science to public health policy through computational modelling approaches.

Using the same mathematical modeling, Dr Yuan estimated last month that Hong Kong residents returning from mainland China after the Lunar New Year celebration, if infected but undiagnosed for 5 days, would bring 60 infected cases in total in a few weeks, which was close to the number of current confirmed cases in Hong Kong.

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