On 16 January, the South Korean biotech executive Chun Jong-yoon grasped the reality unfolding in China and directed his lab to work to stem the virus’s inevitable spread; within days, his team developed detection kits now in high demand around the world.

Existing governmental units in the ministries of health, welfare and foreign affairs, regional municipalities and the president’s office were mobilised to deal with the virus. As a result, South Korea has been effective in controlling the nation’s mortality rate not through travel bans but instead through widespread rigorous quarantine measures and testing, Now even exporting domestically produced test kits – such as the 51,000 diagnostic products sent this week to the United Arab Emirates.

Most importantly, South Korea immediately began testing hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic people, including at drive-through centres. South Korea employed a central tracking app, Corona 100m, that publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 metres of where they are.

Other nations would be wise to copy the South Korean model: on 29 February, 700 people tested positive in the primary South Korean outbreak city of Daegu. By 15 March, 41 new cases were reported there.

From 16 March, South Korea started to screen all people arriving at airports, Koreans included. South Koreans have universal health care, double the number of hospital beds compared to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) norms (and triple that of the UK), and are accustomed to paying half what Americans pay for similar medical procedures. At this historic juncture, there has been a general consensus to trust in and respect the advice coming from doctors and scientists.