A Tempo-geographic Analysis of Global COVID-19 Epidemic Outside of China

Huipeng Liao; Gifty Marley; Yafei Si; Zaisheng Wang; Yewei Xie; Cheng Wang; Weiming Tang

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, and after the epidemic turning better in China, the world outside of China started to experience an ongoing and worsening epidemic. According to the report of the World Health Organization (WHO), by 14 th Mar., 2020 a total of 142,539 cases have been reported in 136 countries and territories, and 9,769 new cases were reported on the single day of 14 th Mar. [1] Italy, Iran, and South Korea aside China have the highest number of confirmed cases (17,660; 11,364; 8086) as of 14 th Mar., 2020. [1] In response, highly affected countries have adopted innovative curbing interventions such as whole city lockdowns, the establishment of drive-through screening centers and banning large social gatherings amongst others to locally contain the virus and prevent further new cases. [2, 3] Affected and unaffected countries following WHO guidelines are developing or have commenced implementation of country-specific prevention, early case detection as well as quarantine and treatment policies. [4] Some countries have closed borders and/or suspended flight commutation with major affected countries including South Korea and Iran regardless of the WHO cautions. [5, 6] Such drastic measures are very essential in the pandemic control, but may also negatively affect the global economy if maintained over a longer duration as countries like China and South Korea contribute largely to global industrial production and provision of goods and services. [7, 8] Although some low-middle income countries (LMICs) in Africa remained unaffected for a while, 15 African countries and territories have reported a total of 73 confirmed cases as of 14 th Mar., 2020. [1] This furthers concerns of a pandemic as under-resourced LMICs in the region lack adequate infrastructures to successfully contain a breakout and are dependent on . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.