The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China.
In these first 50 days of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the virus having spread to two more countries outside China, most of the global community was not particularly worried, as the perception was that only those who had come into contact with the Wuhan seafood market, where the first case was thought to have occurred, had the highest probability of being infected.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January 2020 and a pandemic in March 2020. As of 22 March 2021, more than 123 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 2.71 million deaths attributed to COVID-19, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.