(Yicai Global) May 7 -- China’s total number of Covid-19 cases could have reached 7.7 million if the government did not introduce restrictive measures to help control the virus, according to an article published in science journal Nature.

Researchers from the United Kingdom’s University of Southampton, China’s Fudan University, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University in the US, and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention found through model-based research that China’s government intervention stopped the disease from spreading much faster than it could have domestically and bought time for the rest of the world to put in place protective measures.

Finding pharmaceutical methods to prevent a new emerging infectious disease within several months is unrealistic, the article published May 4 said. Not all patients can recover with limited resources and so non-medical interventions -- like quarantines, tracking close contacts of patients, restricting travel, closing public buildings and canceling public gathers -- were an important part of coping.

The model, using a framework based on epidemiology and anonymous human activities, estimated that there had been a total of 114,325 Covid-19 cases in the Chinese mainland as of Feb. 29. Without government intervention, the figure could have been 67 times greater: about 7.7 million.

Detecting and isolating patients as soon as possible can does a better job of preventing the spread of infection than limiting travel and reducing human contact, the research found. The model implied the number of cases in China could have been reduced by as much as 95 percent if preventative measures began three weeks earlier, and reduced the number of regions affected to just 61 cities, compared to the real figure of 308 cities so far.

Editor: James Boynton