Modeling of a coronavirus disease outbreak at the beginning of 2021 in Shijiazhuang， Hebei Province， China

ObjectiveTo model an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 （COVID-19） in Shijiazhuang and forecast its spread trend.

MethodWe collected confirmed COVID-19 cases from the Health Commission of Hebei Province during the period of January 2 to January 27， 2021. We built a new model （SEIaIcRK）， including the contribution of asymptomatic cases， based on the traditional SEIR model to explore and analyze the transmission of COVID-19.

ResultsA total of 863 confirmed cases were reported during the study period （ended on January 27， 2021）. Our model fitted well with the daily cumulative incidence data and showed that the effective reproductive number decreased sharply from 3.80 on January 2 to 1.54 on January 4， then further decreased to <1 afterwards. Our model also predicted that number of COVID-19 cases would not increase after Feb 16， 2021.

ConclusionThe SEIaIcRK model can be used to predict the spread trend of COVID-19 in Shijiazhuang. The current COVID-19 countermeasures effectively contain the disease spread.