Research finds huge impact of interventions on spread of Covid-19

Study suggests number of cases could have been cut by 66% if China had acted a week earlier

• Coronavirus latest - live

The rapid spread of coronavirus around the world could have been substantially curtailed if the broad swath of measures China brought in to control the outbreak were introduced just weeks earlier, researchers say.

Sophisticated modelling of the outbreak suggests that China had 114,325 cases by the end of February 2020, a figure that would have been 67 times higher without interventions such as early detection, isolation of the infected, and travel restrictions.