At least one model aligns with Zhong’s estimate. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine predict that the peak could occur anytime now. Sebastian Funk, a statistician who models infectious diseases and who coauthored the analysis, says the prediction is based on an estimate that one infected person in Wuhan was, on average, infecting between 1.5 and 4.5 others — a measure known as the virus’s effective reproduction number, or R — before the travel restrictions were introduced on 23 January. Funk estimates that at the peak around a million people, about 10% of Wuhan’s population, will be infected.

Funk posted the analysis, which has not been peer-reviewed, on his institute’s website on 12 February. But he says that since it was done, a decline in the number of new cases and deaths in Wuhan suggests that infections might have already peaked. (More than 14,000 new cases were reported on 13 February, but the bump was due to authorities changing the way cases are diagnosed and not a true spike).