Bilateral trade is the sum of exports between partner country and China. To control for the argument that the number of positive cases are underreported in many countries and the scale of testing is small, the outcome variable is measured as a number of positive cases on the total tested. The outcome variable Y in the above model is the number of corona cases reported from each partnering country. The econometric model tested by the research is indicated below: If the arguments made by many that Chinese connection is responsible for a sharp rise in cases, then we expect a strong relation between bilateral trade variable and number of cases. Trade is a proxy variable for indicating the strength of the connection between China and partner country. The relation between China and the partner country is assessed using a bilateral trade variable, which is calculated as the sum of imports and exports with China. It is in this context, the research undertaken investigates the relation between China and partner country on a number of corona cases reported. However, what is bewildering in the corona infections across the world is that number of cases reported from situated far-off countries from China are much larger than close countries such as Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea & Japan despite the considerable strong connection between China & these countries. The countries across the world are critiquing China for its failure to contain the spread of the virus. Despite such restrictions, the virus however now touches far corners of the globe. The severe restrictions included a travel ban that lasted for almost 76 days. To curb the spread of infection, the chinese government has imposed severe restrictions in Wuhan, the city in China from where the virus originated. The recent evidence also indicates asymptomatic transfer wherein infected individuals will spread the disease even before symptoms appear. The established transmission route for transmission of the corona is being in close contact with corona positive person where there is a high probability of droplet exchange from talking, coughing, and sneezing from an infected person. The number of cases may be much higher than the actual reported due to low testing rates in many countries. As on 22nd April 2020, COVID cases reported from over 210 countries across the globe. WHO declared COVID 2019 as global pandemic and called for a united fight to defeat the virus. The number of cases in these countries now far exceed China, which reports overall cases of 82,788 where the virus originated.

As on 22nd April 2020, overall 0.8 million cases reported from the USA and over 140, 000 case each reported from Spain, Italy, France & Germany. Contrary to the common notion that developing and less developed countries that are geographically closer to china will see more rise in cases, the emerging evidence indicates a high rise in cases particularly from the developed world which are geographically far off from China. The impact of corona virus has been uneven across several countries.

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