China

Affected Countries

The novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China in late December. Chinese health officials informed the WHO about a cluster of 41 patients who were experiencing a type of pneumonia. They discovered that the cases were linked to a seafood wholesale market, which shut down on January 1, 2020. On January 11, 2020 the first reported death caused by the coronavirus occurred. The country quickly began experiencing an increased number of cases and deaths caused by covid-19. On February 9, 2020, the death toll in China surpassed the death toll caused by the SARS epidemic with 811 deaths.

China was heavily criticized by other countries regarding how the country handled the outbreak. The country was unable to slow down the outbreak, resulting in the spread of the virus throughout mainland China and the rest the world; causing a pandemic. As the disease continued to spread throughout the country, medical facilities were unable to keep up and begun running out of medical supplies and space for patients. The country quickly started panicking and measures had to be set in place in order to try and slow the down the spread of the virus.

See next: How China slowly began to recover, China Death Toll