COVID-19 will surpass the one million case mark within hours. In some regions we see signs of hope through a flattening of the infection curve, while others are still suffering the impact of exponential growth, or expecting a drastic increase in the number of patients. However, many people still have doubts about the way the virus spread, and fundamentally, how it did so so quickly. The New York Times created an animated infographic that explains each step of SARS-CoV-2, starting from that market in Wuhan...
COVID-19 is still among us. The world has been forced to change, and in most cases, not for the better. As social distancing measures spread, billions of healthy people are beginning to feel the labor and economic consequences. The actual vaccine is still far away, and experts are working on possible treatments to reduce symptoms and the damage associated with the disease, without abandoning protection for at-risk groups.
This whole cocktail raises an uncomfortable question: "How long?" And the truth is we only have educated opinions. Bill Gates, who is credited with the first warnings about the impact of a new pandemic, spoke of six to ten weeks. But beyond the wait and the cross-criticism, many want to know exactly how all this began, and most importantly: How the virus escaped. The animated infographic published by The New York Times explains it:
The world activated the most extensive travel restrictions in history, and still it was not enough. The infographic points to a "seafood market" near the Hankou train station (with tens of thousands of daily passengers), which actually functioned as a wholesale hub for all kinds of animals, alive and dead. Just four cases that turned into dozens by the end of December, with no response to conventional pneumonia treatments.
But the true size of the outbreak turned out to be much larger: around a thousand cases. With each patient infecting two or three people on average, not even a perfect response from the authorities would have prevented the advance of COVID-19. The problem was that the local authorities remained silent. The World Health Organization received the first alerts on December 31, with assurances that the disease was "preventable and controllable".
The calendar also worked against us. Hundreds of millions of people were preparing to return to their hometowns and cities to celebrate the Chinese New Year. On January 1, a day after the first alerts were sent to the WHO, at least 175,000 people left Wuhan. In the following three weeks, the exodus simply accelerated: Before the end of the month (January 21), travelers were more than seven million. People could still move freely.
Thousands of those passengers were infected, and within hours, the first cases appeared in Beijing and Shanghai. 48 hours later, the government ordered the lockdown in Wuhan, but it was too late: local outbreaks had already begun, and even worse, international traffic remained open. Thousands of people left Wuhan towards other regions of the planet. Only New York receives an average of 900 passengers per month, and more than 15,000 went directly to Bangkok, a very popular destination. That city saw the first case outside China.
Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong. The first US case occurred in Seattle. Experts estimate that 85 percent of infected (and contagious) travelers were not detected at any time. On January 31 the aerial lockdowns began, but once again, the response was slow and late: COVID-19 had established itself in 26 countries.
The rest was pure local expansion. Restaurants, markets, universities, churches, concerts, parties, sports events. By early March, COVID-19 no longer needed China. Iran, Italy and South Korea began accumulating thousands of cases at great speed. The South Korean containment strategy proved very effective, while in Iran and Italy exactly the opposite happened.
The multiplication of testing, tracing and patient isolation began to have positive effects, however, in the United States there were multiple delays. The country closed almost all its air routes to Europe, but with the disease present in the territory, the refusal of many authorities to establish social distancing measures and the resistance of part of the public, COVID-19 only kept advancing. Today, the United States has more than 200,000 reported cases, and more than five thousand deaths. Only in New York there are 84,000 cases.
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