“The speed of China's response was the crucial factor”, explains Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota, USA). “They moved very quickly to stop transmission. Other countries, even though they had much longer to prepare for the arrival of the virus, delayed their response and that meant they lost control”. The first reported cases of the disease that came to be known as COVID-19 occurred in Wuhan, Hubei province, in late December 2019. China released the genomic sequence of the virus on Jan 10, 2020, and began enacting a raft of rigorous countermeasures later in the same month.
The draconian use state violence -- boarding up houses etc. -- seems to have had an effect. Other countries may have had more time, but they were also subject to a long period of unnecessary spread of the disease because of Chinese government laxity in admitting and communicating the problem publicly.
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