| December 2019 | Clusters of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan, China. Human infection probably began sometime between 9 October and 20 December 2019.69 WHO alerted of a novel coronavirus on 31 December 2019. Several cases in Hubei Province, China, and probably already spread to surrounding areas. The virus may have already been spreading in France late December 2019.70
|
| January 2020 | First case outside China reported in Thailand on 13 January 2020. Cases reported in at least 24 countries, mostly in South and Southeast Asia; also in Europe, the USA, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.71 The ‘new disease’ declared a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ on 30 January 2020. Mostly ‘imported cases only’, mainly travellers from China. Soon ‘export’ of virus from other countries started. The Wuhan lockdown,72 which later inspired a series of lockdowns across the world.
|
| February 2020 | The new disease named COVID-19 on 11 February 2020. Cruise ship Princess Diamond quarantined near Japan, sparking media attention. Epidemic in China peaked with ~80 000 cases and 2900 deaths (80% of cases restricted to the Hubei Province).73 Local epidemics of varying attack rates and case fatality rates in 58 countries with imported cases causing ‘local transmission’ reported from 20 countries. South Korea, Italy and Iran emerged as new epicentres.
|
| March 2020 | Europe engulfed with local epidemics. Over 170 countries were affected worldwide. The epidemic in China seemed to have plateaued. WHO declared the epidemic a pandemic. China partially lifted lockdown while India instituted the world’s biggest complete lockdown affecting ~1.4 billion people.74
|
| April 2020 | COVID-19 cases crossed 1 million with more than 50 000 deaths. The US emerged as the most affected country with epicentre in New York. Aerosols implicated in the transmission (prompting ‘mass masking’ of the general public). WHO warned that Africa will be the future epicentre of COVID-19.
|
| May 2020 | South America became the new epicentre of COVID-19. More than 325 000 deaths globally with ~5 million cases in 216 countries/territories/areas. At the time of writing (end of May 2020), no effective medication and/or vaccine exist. The pandemic appeared to have slowed down in countries such as South Korea, Italy, Spain, France and the rest of Europe. In Africa, the number of cases seemed to fall short of forecasts. Tremendous socioeconomic fallouts after an estimated 4.5 billion persons (more than half of humanity) subjected to social distancing norms and/or lockdowns.75
|