An inevitable pandemic: geographic insights into the COVID-19 global health emergency

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting disease, COVID-19, in China in late 2019 provides unique and sometimes overwhelming challenges to global public health and to the health and well-being of populations. The World Health Organization's subsequent declaration of this outbreak as a public health emergency of international importance was, if anything, an understatement. The emergence of this pathogen is best seen as the latest and globally one of the most important examples of emerging infectious diseases - a phenomenon that has been at the forefront of global health for several decades. We trace the initial experience with COVID-19, highlighting experiences in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We emphasize selected countries, with varied demographic, socioeconomic, and political profiles, and identify instructive lessons from these national and regional experiences in terms of the efficacy of responses. Previous experience with serious epidemics of emerging infectious disease, well developed public health infrastructure, early, well-coordinated and transparent communication, rapidly established surveillance, case ascertainment, contact tracing, and containment are all vitally important in the control of this disease.