A Virus That Knew Borders. COVID-19 Patients Zero Worldwide and the Strength of Transnationalism

Abstract

In less than 3 months in 2020, COVID-19 spread to more than 200 countries and turned into a global pandemic that affected all world regions. Far from being a “post-Westphalian” virus that knew no borders, COVID-19 remained embedded in unequal patterns of international mobilities. To substantiate this claim, I devised an original methodology inspired by “thing-following studies”. A dataset was created on all patients zero worldwide (n = 287) in the 206 countries where they were identified. Empirically, my findings dismantle some myth about the international spread of COVID-19. First, the data put Europe – rather than China – at the core of the pandemic: four Western European countries exported half of all patients zero to entire regions like South America or Africa, reflecting postcolonial legacies. Second, twothirds were in fact nationals who brought back the virus to their own country. Third, a majority were involved in cross-border activities relating to business, family, religion or education, rather than tourism – most of them middle-aged men. Theoretically, this demonstrates the strength of transnational activities among international mobilities. Transnationalism appears as a crucial – though deeply unequal – infrastructure of our current globalization.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• patients zero
• globalization
• transnationalism
• mobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 I would like to thank specifically Donia Mansour, Hedi Attia and Tony Tanchaleune (as well as Gabriel Marin-Couture and Gabrielle Fortier), for their precious help to gather and organize the data.

2 “Europe” (53 countries in all Europe, including Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia), “Eastern Europe” (22 countries in Northern Africa including Sudan and Somalia and in the Middle East including Iran and Pakistan), “Pan American” (45 countries in North and South America with the Caribbeans), “Africa” (47 sub Saharan countries and islands with Algeria). “Western Pacific” and “South Asia” were grouped together for more clarity (22 countries).

3 “n”, in this and the following instances, always refers to the rounded number of countries with available information out of 206 countries in the database.

4 All countries in the database are represented on the graph. Countries with missing information about the country of origin of their patient(s) zero are isolated nodes in the network.

5 A color is assigned to each region. Countries whose patients zero do not come from the 7 countries of origin, and those with missing information are isolated in the network. The font size depends on the degree centrality of each country in the network.

6 These cases were typically coded both “tourism” and “work”.

7 It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle those different purposes. I therefore assign more than one type of mobility for each patient and weight them accordingly.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Notes on contributors

Romain Lecler

Romain Lecler is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He specializes in the sociology of globalization and global policies.