The Johns Hopkins University blog on the Coronavirus brings home how quickly this virus has traveled since it was first reported to the World Health Organization:

“On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of an outbreak of “pneumonia of unknown cause” detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China – the seventh-largest city in China with 11 million residents. As of January 23, there are over 800 cases of 2019-nCoV confirmed globally, including cases in at least 20 regions in China and nine countries/territories. The first reported infected individuals, some of whom showed symptoms as early as December 8, were discovered to be among stallholders from the Wuhan South China Seafood Market. Subsequently, the wet market was closed on Jan 1. The virus causing the outbreak was quickly determined to be a novel coronavirus. On January 10, gene sequencing further determined it to be the new Wuhan coronavirus, namely 2019-nCoV, a betacoronavirus, related to the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus (MERS-CoV) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARSCoV). However, the mortality and transmissibility of 2019-nCoV are still unknown, and likely to vary from those of the prior referenced coronaviruses.”

Johns Hopkins Civil Engineering Professor Lauren Gardner worked with the center to build the map and website.

It “displays up-to-the-minute statistics from various sources: the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China (NHC), and two other sites,” the press release states.