Hong Kong experts predict Chongqing to be next virus hot spot

Hong Kong infectious disease experts said on Monday that Chongqing may become the next hot spot in the current novel coronavirus outbreak due to its close connection with the epiccenter, Wuhan.

"We modeled epidemic curves out to August 2020 for all the major city clusters: Chongqing, Shanghai-Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing. Chongqing is predicted to have the largest epidemic due to large population and most intense traffic volume coupled to Wuhan," said lead researcher and dean of Hong Kong University's faculty of medicine Gabriel Leung, who led HK's efforts against H1N1 in 2009, at a press conference.

He said outbreaks in Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen could peak in April or May and gradually slow in June and July.

Chongqing, a mega city of 30 million people in Southwest China, has close transport ties to Wuhan in Central China's Hubei province.

So far, Chongqing had 132 confirmed novel coronavirus cases as of midnight Jan 27, ranking fourth in the number of confirmed cases after Wuhan, Huanggang and Xiaogan in Hubei province.

But Leung added that their projections could be too pessimistic as they only took into account lockd own measures in Wuhan and not other health intervention policies in other Chinese cities.