COVID-19 in comparison with other emerging viral diseases: risk of geographic spread via travel

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Purpose of review</jats:title><jats:p>The COVID-19 pandemic poses a major global health threat. The rapid spread was facilitated by air travel although rigorous travel bans and lockdowns were able to slow down the spread. How does COVID-19 compare with other emerging viral diseases of the past two decades?</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Recent findings</jats:title><jats:p>Viral outbreaks differ in many ways, such as the individuals most at risk e.g. pregnant women for Zika and the elderly for COVID-19, their vectors of transmission, their fatality rate, and their transmissibility often measured as basic reproduction number. The risk of geographic spread via air travel differs significantly between emerging infectious diseases.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Summary</jats:title><jats:p>COVID-19 is not associated with the highest case fatality rate compared with other emerging viral diseases such as SARS and Ebola, but the combination of a high reproduction number, superspreading events and a globally immunologically naïve population has led to the highest global number of deaths in the past 20 decade compared to any other pandemic.</jats:p></jats:sec>