• Eunha Shim, Amna Tariq, Wongyeong Choi, Yiseul Lee, and Gerardo Chowell.
• Department of Mathematics, Soongsil University, 369 Sangdoro, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul, 06978, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: alicia@ssu.ac.kr.
• Int. J. Infect. Dis. 2020 Apr 1; 93: 339-344.

ObjectivesSince the first case of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) identified on Jan 20, 2020, in South Korea, the number of cases rapidly increased, resulting in 6284 cases including 42 deaths as of Mar 6, 2020. To examine the growth rate of the outbreak, we present the first study to report the reproduction number of COVID-19 in South Korea.MethodsThe daily confirmed cases of COVID-19 in South Korea were extracted from publicly available sources. By using the empirical reporting delay distribution and simulating the generalized growth model, we estimated the effective reproduction number based on the discretized probability distribution of the generation interval.ResultsWe identified four major clusters and estimated the reproduction number at 1.5 (95% CI: 1.4-1.6). In addition, the intrinsic growth rate was estimated at 0.6 (95% CI: 0.6, 0.7), and the scaling of growth parameter was estimated at 0.8 (95% CI: 0.7, 0.8), indicating sub-exponential growth dynamics of COVID-19. The crude case fatality rate is higher among males (1.1%) compared to females (0.4%) and increases with older age.ConclusionsOur results indicate an early sustained transmission of COVID-19 in South Korea and support the implementation of social distancing measures to rapidly control the outbreak.Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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