Early spread of COVID-19 in Romania

This individual-level dataset describes (a) the early spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and (b) the first human-to-human transmission networks, in Romania. Specifically, in the first set of data (a), we profile the first 147 cases referring to: whether an individual is an index case, place of residence, sex, age, probable citizenship, probable country and place of infection, arrival date to a Romanian county, COVID-19 confirmation date as well as the sources of information. Also, the second set of data (b) contains the first observed human-to-human COVID-19 transmission networks (attributes of the nodes and the direction of COVID-19 transmission, i.e. who infects whom). Networks embed 159 nodes and 203 transmission ties. Indirect identifiers are masked / de-identified. 

Methods
The dataset was collected from the Romanian Ministry of Health communiqués. Data from official statements was supplemented with information reported by Romanian local media. This strategy was deemed to improve the quality and accuracy of the information communicated by the Romanian officials. Every reported individual case (microdata) is assigned online public sources which can be subsequently accessed for further details. The level of data granularity prevents any form of disclosing and tracking the infected persons. Additionally,  indirect identifiers are masked / de-identified. The first COVID-19 confirmed case in the dataset is on February 22, 2020, while the last one is on April 2, 2020. 

We employed the following case selection method: firstly, we started by selecting for each Romanian county, the first patients (index cases). Afterwards, we continued by selecting all publicly available individual cases officially reported on the territory of Romania. When the official Romanian authorities restricted public access to COVID-19 infected patients, we stopped the data collection procedure. Human-to-human transmission networks were built by scanning, in the available official data, for infection chains (since February 22, 2020, and as of March 20, 2020). The process was driven by the condition that both the source and the target of a chain are officially COVID-19 confirmed cases.