Scanning Coronavirus on the Silk Road

The mobility pattern of Chinese people through the Silk Road route in the past seems to have stayed the same. This mobility route may look similar to the spread of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19.

REUTERS/ALY SONG

Women wearing face masks wait for buses at a bus stop in Xianning of Hubei province, the epicentre of China\'s coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, (25/3/2020)

Since the beginning of this year, the global community has been busy with a new coronavirus or SARS CoV-2, which is the cause of COVID-19. At present, the effort to fight against SARS CoV-2 has been intensified among the global community, including in Indonesia and through to the remote regions. The reason is, after more or less three months, the chain of this virus is not cut-off, but instead it increasingly spread throughout the world.

When we look deeper, this virus spreads from east to west, from Asia to Europe and America. Referring to the daily report released on 21 January, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), until 20 January, 2020 SARS-CoV-2 has just become an epidemic in the Asian region. The first four countries to report the COVID-19 case were China, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. The number of cases as of 20 January, 2020 was 282 cases.