That's according to research published today in the journal Science.

Restrictions in China are being eased, although international visitors are currently banned from entering the country.

Our correspondent in Beijing, Steven McDonald, explain the significance off these estimated figures.

The only thing that we can kind of see is the trend, and some people would, Some analysts would say.

Don't look so much of the numbers in China.

But look at the government decisions.

Well, I'm standing above the second ring road in Beijing.

We might apply the second Ring Road Index if you like where you can see cars are still coming through here.

It looks like that they're flowing for reasonably well.

But the thing is because they're flowing, it's not the slow moving traffic, the almost gridlock.

We would usually expect it so you can kind of see how we're heading back towards normal here in Beijing, but not all the way, if you know what I mean.

And that again would seem to indicate that the authorities are pretty confident that they have this under control.

However, Xi Jinping has said today that short companies should be going back to work cautiously, but in people's free time, they still they still should be exercising this kind of social distancing.

So, according to China's president, don't go to the movies, watch a film at home on the in the lounge with your family, he said.

To restaurants, they should be capping the number of diners at any particular time to try and again minimize the social interaction here because they're worried that as people come in from overseas, we're getting these infections in the form of overseas arrivals.

That could be a new spike in cases here.

I mean, today there was a case of a student.

A Chinese student is coming from the UK, returned to Wuhan.

Would you believe where this all started on his tested positive.

So even in the city where this crisis began, there's the potential for a new spiking cases in the form off overseas arrivals.