5 The IDVI score is a validated tool to estimate a country’s capacity to prepare for and manage infectious disease threats. We also report Infectious Disease Vulnerability Index (IDVI) scores for countries receiving significant numbers of travellers from Wuhan. These data represent direct origin (Wuhan) to destination trips, and indirect trips that originated in Wuhan, but had connecting flights to a final destination. IATA data accounts for ~90% of passenger travel itineraries on commercial flights, excluding transportation via unscheduled charter flights (the remainder is modelled using market intelligence). We evaluated 2018 travel data generated from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to quantify passenger volumes originating from the international airport in Wuhan, China, between January and March, inclusive. 2 Given the recent history of zoonotic transmission of a coronavirus emerging from a live-animal market in China in 2002, and the potential for novel pathogens to rapidly spread globally via commercial air travel, 3, 4 we sought to evaluate international travel patterns from Wuhan, China in order to anticipate patterns of disease dispersion should this outbreak evolve. On 8 January 2019, news outlets and ProMED-mail reported that genetic sequencing demonstrated a novel coronavirus as the potential causative organism. At the time of publication, limited information has been produced directly by Chinese public health authorities however, media reports documenting interviews with such authorities have stated that the aetiology is not yet identified, that there are now 59 affected patients, and that severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), avian influenza and several other common respiratory pathogens have been ruled out ( ). Some patients were reported to have fever, dyspnea and pulmonary infiltrates on chest radiography. On 5 January 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a document outlining their request for more information from Chinese public health authorities, and detailed 44 patients had ‘pneumonia of unknown aetiology’, with 121 close contacts under surveillance ( The WHO reported that 11 patients were severely ill, and many affected individuals had contact with the Huanan Seafood market. The seafood market has since been closed, but purportedly sold a variety of live animal species. 1 Hospitals in the region held an emergency symposium, and support from federal agencies is reportedly helping to determine the source of infection and causative organism.
On 30 December 2019, a report of a cluster of pneumonia of unknown aetiology was published on ProMED-mail, possibly related to contact with a seafood market in Wuhan, China.
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