Certainly, the most extensive travel restrictions to stop an outbreak in human history have been seen, yet it has not been enough. It was thought that if you stop traveling, it prevents the virus from spreading around the world. However, this did not work and therefore it will be explained why.
Many of the earliest known cases were clustered around a seafood market in Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million and a transportation hub. Four cases grew to dozens in late December. Doctors only knew
that sick people had viral pneumonia that did not respond to standard treatments.
With each patient infecting two or three more on average, even a perfect response may not have contained the spread. But Chinese officials did not alert the public to the risks in December. It was not until December 31 that they alerted the World Health Organization and issued a statement, and a consolation. “The disease is preventable and controllable”, said the government.
Dramatic expansion
The timing of the outbreak could not have been worse. Hundreds of millions of people were about to travel back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year. And it was discovered that at least 175,000 people left Wuhan just that day. Being that Wuhan’s exits accelerated for the next three weeks. About 7 million people left in January, before travel was restricted.
Certainly, thousands of travelers were infected. When Chinese officials recognized the risk of person-to-person transmission on January 21, local outbreaks had already spread in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities. Two days later, authorities blocked Wuhan, and many cities followed him in the coming weeks. Despite this, local outbreaks were already growing rapidly.
As the outbreak spread through China in early January, international travel continued as normal. Thousands of people flew from Wuhan to cities around the world. More than 900 people went to New York each month on average, according to recent trends more than 2,200 to Sydney more than 15,000 people went to Bangkok, the most popular destination. That’s where the first known case abroad appeared in mid-January, a 61-year-old woman who traveled from Wuhan to Bangkok despite having a fever, headache, and sore throat.
Notably, the researchers believe that about 85 percent of infected travelers went undetected. But they were still contagious. Thus, the virus began to spread locally, easily moving in confined spaces such as churches and restaurants, and infecting people who had not traveled to China, the beginning of a pandemic.
Source: Jin Wu, Weiyi Cai, Derek Watkins, and James Glanz | The New York Times
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