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Bangkok, Thailand has been found to be the city most at risk from a global spread of the novel coronavirus.

This was the finding made by researchers in population mapping at the University of Southampton, where the results of their investigation was publicised on Jan. 28, 2020.

Using just travel data of people from mainland China, they managed to find a pattern to the distribution of infections, results which closely match the frequency of coronavirus infection reports currently appearing around the world outside of China.

Simply put, this finding was based on the number of air travellers predicted to arrive in Bangkok from the worst affected cities in mainland China.

What about Singapore?

The researchers found that Singapore would be ranked sixth for the most number of infections worldwide based on the number of mainland travellers coming here.

This prediction is pretty close, as Singapore is now currently ranked seventh.

According to the research, the top 20 countries most in danger are:

1. Bangkok, Thailand

2. Hong Kong

3. Taipei, Taiwan

4. Seoul, South Korea

5. Tokyo, Japan

6. Singapore

7. Phuket, Thailand

8. Osaka, Japan

9. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

10. Macau

11. Bali, Indonesia

12. Sydney, Australia

13. Chiang Mai, Thailand

14. Melbourne, Australia

15. Los Angeles, United States

16. New York, United States

17. Dubai, UAE

18. Niha Trang, Vietnam

19. London, UK

20. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This was the actual number of infections globally just after Jan. 28:

1. Thailand: 14

2. Hong Kong: 8

3. Taiwan: 8

4. Japan: 7

5. Macau: 7

6. Malaysia: 7

7. Singapore: 7

8. Australia: 5

9. US: 5

10. France: 4

11. Germany: 4

12. South Korea: 4

13. Canada: 2

15. Vietnam: 2

15. Cambodia: 1

16. Nepal: 1

17. Sri Lanka: 1

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Internally within China, the researchers also identified cities and provinces that are at high-risk from the spread of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

Within mainland China, the cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing are all identified as high-risk by the researchers, along with the Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Henan.

How research was done

The team used anonymised mobile phone and IP address data, along with international air travel data to understand typical patterns of movement of people within China, and worldwide, during the annual 40-day Lunar New Year celebrations, including the seven day public holiday from Jan. 24 to 30.

From this, they identified 18 Chinese cities, including Wuhan, at high-risk from the new coronavirus and established the volume of air passengers likely to be travelling from these cities to global destinations over a three-month period.

The team was then able to rank the top 30 most at-risk countries and cities around the world.

The researchers acknowledged that their analysis is based on "non-outbreak" travel patterns, but highlight that a high proportion of people travelled with symptoms at an early stage of the outbreak, before restrictions were put in place.

This means that any lockdown in travel that took place, had occurred too late to prevent the travelling of infected persons from China.

Travel cordons might have only coincided with the latter stages of peak population numbers leaving Wuhan for the holiday period.

According to Wuhan authorities it is likely more than five million people had already left the city.

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