Our analysis, while limited because of the scarcity of data, has two important strengths. Firstly, it is based on the simulation of a wide range of possibilities regarding epidemic parameters and allows for the full propagation on the final estimates of the many remaining uncertainties regarding 2019-nCoV and the situation in Wuhan: on the actual size of the epidemic, on the size of the initial zoonotic event at the wet market, on the date(s) of the initial animal-to-human transmission event(s) and on the generation time interval. As it accounts for all these uncertainties, our analysis provides a summary of the current state of knowledge about the human-to-human transmissibility of 2019-nCoV. Secondly, its focus on the possibility of superspreading events by using negative-binomial offspring distributions appears relevant in the context of emerging coronaviruses [7,8]. While our estimate of k remains imprecise, the simulations suggest that very low values of k < 0.1 are less likely than higher values < 0.1 that correspond to a more homogeneous transmission pattern. However, values of k in the range of 0.1–0.2 are still compatible with a small risk of occurrence of large superspreading events, especially impactful in hospital settings [15,16].