How Coronavirus Start In China?

On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) China office heard the first reports of a previously-unknown virus behind a number of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population of over 11 million.

What started as an epidemic mainly limited to China has now become a truly global pandemic. There have now been over 4,444,670 confirmed cases and 302,493 deaths, according the John Hopkins University Covid-19 dashboard, which collates information from national and international health authorities. The disease has been detected in more than 200 countries and territories, with the US, Russia and the UK experiencing the most widespread outbreaks, followed by Spain, Italy and Brazil. In the UK, there have been 233,151 confirmed cases and 33,614 deaths as of May 14. The true number of infections and deaths is likely to be considerably higher.

The Chinese government responded to the initial outbreak by placing Wuhan and nearby cities under a de-facto quarantine encompassing roughly 50 million people in Hubei province. This quarantine is now slowly being lifted, as authorities watch to see whether cases will rise again. The US is now the new epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak. As of May 15, the country has 1,417,889 confirmed infections and 85,906 deaths. In Italy, where the death toll surpassed that of China on March 19, the government took the unprecedented step of extending a lockdown to the entire country, shutting cinemas, theatres, gyms, discos and pubs and banning funerals and weddings. In the UK, the government has shut schools, pubs, restaurants, bars, cafés and all non-essential shops for at least nine weeks. On May 10 Boris Johnson outlined a flexible plan that would see some schools reopen by June depending on the current threat posed to the UK by the virus.

On March 23, prime minister Boris Johnson put the UK under lockdown saying that police will now have the power to fine people who gather in groups of more than two or who are outside for non-essential reasons. People with the main coronavirus symptoms – a fever or dry cough – are required to stay at home for seven days while households in which at least one person is displaying symptoms should quarantine themselves for 14 days. Four days later the prime minister and health secretary Matt Hancock both tested positive for the virus – Johnson spent three nights in intensive care and then stayed at the prime minister's country residence, Chequers to recover. He returned to work at Downing Street on the morning of April 27.

On March 11 the WHO officially declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. "WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction," said its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Although the WHO designated Covid-19 a "public health emergency of international concern" (PHEIC) on January 30, it had been reluctant to call it a pandemic. "Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death," Adhanom said.

A quick note on naming. Although popularly referred to as coronavirus, on February 11, the WHO announced the official name of the disease: Covid-19. The virus that causes that disease is called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or Sars-CoV-2 for short.