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The COVID-19 pandemic, 2019–2023

The COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, from the first reported cluster of pneumonia in Wuhan in December 2019 to the end of WHO’s public health emergency of international concern and of the US public health emergency in May 2023: WHO’s declarations, the spread, measures such as lockdowns, the science and the vaccines, the variants of concern and the waves they drove, and the counts. A sample timeline built from the sources cited on each moment: WHO statements and reports, regulators and public-health agencies, peer-reviewed papers, the Johns Hopkins CSSE and Our World in Data counts, and Wikipedia as the general reference. **How to read it.** Chapter headings mark the phases. Emergencies, lockdowns, waves and events are bands (ochre, navy, brick and grey); everything else is a moment. Green marks science and vaccines, brick the variants, grey the counts. Related things (a variant reported and its designation, an emergency declared and ended) are linked. **Dates and numbers.** Dates are UTC days unless a time is given. Counts are confirmed cases and deaths as reported, which understate the true numbers; WHO’s excess-mortality figure is an estimate and labelled so. Waves are approximate. The origin of the virus has not been established: it remains under investigation and is debated (see WHO’s SAGO reports). Measures are described with their dates, not judged.

100 moments · 2019-12-01T00:00:00Z CE – 2023-05-11T00:00:00Z CE · by @athan · @athan

Moments

  1. Emergence
  2. Earliest known cases fall ill
  3. Doctors warn colleagues
  4. A cluster of pneumonia reported in Wuhan
  5. Huanan market closed
  6. WHO sets up an incident team
  7. WHO’s first outbreak news
  8. A new coronavirus identified
  9. The genome is published
  10. First reported death
  11. First case outside China
  12. Human-to-human spread confirmed
  13. First US case
  14. Emergency Committee first meets
  15. Wuhan locked down
  16. First cases in Europe
  17. First clinical report
  18. A public health emergency of international concern
  19. First death outside China
  20. A close relative in bats
  21. Li Wenliang dies
  22. The disease is named COVID-19
  23. The virus is named SARS-CoV-2
  24. First case in Africa
  25. A cluster in Lombardy
  26. First case in Latin America
  27. WHO–China joint mission reports
  28. A pandemic
  29. WHO: a pandemic
  30. US national emergency
  31. WHO: Europe the epicentre
  32. First vaccine trial dose
  33. EU closes its external borders
  34. Solidarity trial launched
  35. Tokyo Olympics postponed
  36. 1 million confirmed cases
  37. 100,000 confirmed deaths
  38. Oxford vaccine trial begins
  39. ACT Accelerator launched
  40. Remdesivir authorised in the US
  41. Waves and trials
  42. WHO advice on masks
  43. Dexamethasone reduces deaths
  44. 10 million confirmed cases
  45. 500,000 confirmed deaths
  46. WHO brief on transmission
  47. Phase 3 vaccine trials begin
  48. Russia registers Sputnik V
  49. 1 million confirmed deaths
  50. The first vaccines