Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak situation

What is a Coronavirus

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a dangerous disease caused by a new virus.
This disease causes respiratory illnesses (like the flu) with symptoms such as coughing, fever, and in more severe cases, difficulty breathing. You can protect yourself by washing your hands frequently, avoiding touching your face, and avoiding close contact (1 meter or 3 feet) with people experiencing symptoms that have been caused by the coronavirus.

How it spreads

Coronavirus (Covid-19) spreads through contact with infected people when they cough or sneeze. It also spreads when someone touches a surface or an object that has a virus on it, then touches their eyes, nose or mouth and avoids the infectious disease by keeping their distance and alert high level.

Originally broadcast live on 27 March 2020, the daily press briefing on coronavirus COVID-19, direct from WHO Headquarters, Geneva Switzerland. With WHO Director-General Dr Tedros, Dr Micheal Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme,  and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

How the solution handles it

cleanliness of the environment around you stay awake beautiful, stay at home and avoid direct contact with patients infected with the coronavirus. be wary of cleaning up our environment with a disinfectant bacterial cleaner.

• Provide support and cooperation to participate in preventing the spread of the virus Corona.
• Conduct temporary closure of all operational activities of the crowd in various corners of the world location
• Slogans or banners for people to avoid crowded areas for a while.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak situation today

465,916 || Confirmed cases

21,032   || Confirmed deaths

201        || Countries, areas or territories with cases

How to protect your self against Coronavirus (Covid-19) - WHO

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a new coronavirus introduced to humans for the first time.

The COVID-19 pandemic

The name of the disease and the virus

The names for the virus and the disease it causes have been announced by the World Health Organization and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.1

The disease is called coronavirus disease. It is abbreviated as COVID-19.

The virus is called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and it is abbreviated as SARS-CoV-2. In the same statement, the WHO also explains that they themselves also refer to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19” or “the COVID-19 virus” when communicating with the public. We follow the same conventions here.

How did the outbreak start?

On 29 December 2019 Chinese authorities identified a cluster of similar cases of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in China. Wuhan is a city with 11 million inhabitants and is the capital of the Hubei Province.

These cases were soon determined to be caused by a novel coronavirus that was later named SARS-CoV-2.2

Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that are common in humans and are responsible for up to 30% of common colds.3 Corona is Latin for “crown” – this group of viruses is given its name due to the fact that its surface looks like a crown under an electron microscope.

Two outbreaks of new diseases in recent history were also caused by coronaviruses – SARS in 2003 that resulted in around 1,000 deaths4 and MERS in 2012 that resulted in 862 deaths.5

The first cases of COVID-19 outside of China were identified on January 13 in Thailand and on January 16 in Japan.

On January 23rd the city of Wuhan and other cities in the region were placed on lockdown by the Chinese Government.

Since then COVID-19 has spread to many more countries – cases have been reported in all world regions. You can see the latest available data in the dashboards of cases and deaths which are kept up-to-date by Johns Hopkins University and the WHO discussed here.

Deaths from COVID-19

Confirmed deaths to date are what we know. What we know is the total number of confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 to date.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) publishes daily updates of confirmed deaths due to COVID-19. We rely on this data as explained above.

Based on the ECDC data we can track how the number of deaths has changed over time.

In an ongoing outbreak, the final outcomes – death or recovery – for all cases is not yet known. The time from symptom onset to death ranges from 2 to 8 weeks for COVID-19.6 This means that some people who are currently infected with COVID-19 will die at a later date. As we explain below, this needs to be kept in mind when comparing the current number of deaths with the current number of cases.

What does the data on deaths and cases tell us about the mortality risk of COVID-19?

To understand the risks and respond appropriately we would also want to know the mortality risk of COVID-19 – the likelihood that someone who catches the disease will die from it.

We will look into this question in more detail below and explain that this requires us to know (or estimate) the number of total cases and the final number of deaths for a given infected population. Because these are not known, we discuss what the current data can and can not tell us about the risk of death (scroll there).