Our work raises important questions for future research: where should surveillance be focused to detect an emergence as early as possible, especially if resources are limited? Given emergence of a novel infection in a rural setting, how much time can we buy through limiting travel to and from major urban centres? These and other questions will undoubtedly benefit from more systematic studies of emergence in the context of population distributions. Nonetheless, theoretical models such as those presented here can offer useful, fundamental insights to guide such studies.