Researchers hope their findings can be helpful for other countries dealing with outbreaks.
The decision to lock down the city of Wuhan during the first 50 days of the Covid-19 epidemic may have prevented more than 700,000 infections across the country, according to international researchers.
It's hoped that the findings which were published today in the journal Science, could be useful to countries that are still in early phases of the COVID-19 outbreak.
By day 50 of the epidemic on February 9th, there were 30,000 confirmed cases in China, said Christopher Dye, one of the paper's authors.
"Our analysis suggests that without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan by that date," he was quoted as saying in a press release.
"China's control measures appear to have worked by successfully breaking the chain of transmission -- preventing contact between infectious and susceptible people."
The researchers used a combination of case reports, public health information and mobile phone location tracking to investigate the spread of the virus.
