The world was preparing for the turn of the year; it was December 31, 2019 when, in a Chinese government office of the World Health Organization (WHO), the notice that a new form of pneumonia had appeared in the city of Wuhan, caused by a new strain of coronavirus, causing severe acute respiratory syndrome 2, or SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19 was beginning to take over the world.
It is believed (but to this day still not certain) that the virus that causes the disease has jumped the barrier between species via the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, which also traded live animals for consumption. The genetic code of the new coronavirus was quickly sequenced by Chinese scientists and made available to all laboratories in the world. Initially, the disease was not as severe as SARS, but more virulent.
January was advancing and the world was on vacation. The disease was beginning to spread in China (mainly due to the New Year celebrations, on January 25), embarking for other countries in the respiratory system of tourists. While WHO was initially reluctant to declare the covid-19 outbreak a health emergency, it changed its mind on January 30 – in the first week of February, the number of deaths exceeded 800 (SARS killed 774 people worldwide between 2002 and 2003), reaching three thousand fatalities in March.
Case records of the disease began to occur outside of China; the first to emerge was in Thailand, on January 13th. Reports are held in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, USA, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, France (the first to appear in Europe), Nepal, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Germany, Finland, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Italy, Brazil, India, Philippines and the United Kingdom.
