More than 939,436 people have infected with the novel virus, with significant outbreaks in the US, Italy, and Spain, and 2,352 deaths in the UK.
China office heard the first reports of a previously-unknown virus behind a variety of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population of over 11 million.
What started as a plague mainly limited to China has now become a very global pandemic. There have now been over 939,436 confirmed cases and 42,365 deaths, according to the toilet Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard, which collates information from national and international health authorities. The disease has detected in additional than 200 countries and territories, with Italy, the US, and Spain experiencing the first widespread outbreaks outside of China. In the UK, there are 29,474 confirmed cases and a couple of,352 deaths as of April 1.
The Chinese government skilled 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 authoritie]
s watch to ascertain whether cases will rise again. The US is now the new epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, becoming the first country to surpass China’s total confirmed cases. As of April 2, the country has 216,722 confirmed infections and 5,137 deaths. In Italy, where the price surpassed that of China on Saint Joseph, the govt took the unprecedented step of extending a lockdown to the whole country, shutting cinemas, theatres, gyms, discos, and pubs and banning funerals and weddings. In the UK, the govt has closed schools, pubs, restaurants, bars cafés, and every one non-essential shops.
On March 23, prime minister Boris Johnson put the united kingdom under lockdown, saying that police will now have the facility to find people that take in groups of quite two or who are outside for non-essential reasons. People with the most coronavirus symptoms – a fever or dry cough – are required to remain reception for seven days while households during which a minimum of one person is displaying signs should quarantine themselves for 14 days. Four days later, the prime minister and health secretary Matt Hancock both tested positive for the virus – they’re currently self-isolating while performing on the UK’s response.
On March 11, the WHO officially declared that the COVID-19 outbreak might be a pandemic. “WHO has been assessing this outbreak round the clock and that 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 an epidemic. “Pandemic isn’t a word to use lightly or carelessly. It’s a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, resulting in unnecessary suffering and death,” Adhanom said.
A quick note on naming. Although popularly mentioned as coronavirus, on February 11, the WHO announced the official name of the disease: COVID-19. The virus that causes that disease is named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or Sars-CoV-2 for brief.
