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The COVID-19 pandemic is distinct from previous global outbreaks. Starting in Wuhan, China, in late December, the virus has killed at least 4,600 people and infected approximately 120,000 in more than 115 countries.
In declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the World Health Organization director-general explained how the disease marks a departure from the flu-related pandemics of the 20th century.
“We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “And we have never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled, at the same time.”
Pandemic is defined as “the worldwide spread of a new disease.” The outbreaks differ from epidemics, which involve an increase in illnesses in a specific community or region. The last pandemic declared was in 2009 during the outbreak of H1N1 flu, commonly known as the swine flu.
Pandemics of the past century were influenza-related and charted in six phases WHO used to make recommendations based on the severity of a disease’s spread.
According to the CDC, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic started with two unrelated children from California testing positive for the infection.
The first recorded pandemic may have been a flu-related outbreak that started in Asia in the summer of 1580. The 1918 flu pandemic, also carried by the H1N1 virus, killed 40 million to 50 million people, the deadliest in recorded history. A new flu strain detected in China’s Yunnan province in 1957 killed 1 to 2 million people. The Hong Kong flu pandemic killed approximately 500,000 to 2 million people in the late 1960s. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed up to 575,000 people in the past decade.
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COVID-19 is already deadlier than the two coronavirus outbreaks of the past 20 years combined. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 killed 916 people in 29 countries over nine months. The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 killed 858 people.
As the COVID-19 pandemic death count rises daily, the numbers provided by global and national health organizations diverge. WHO has reported to date a lower number of total deaths from the coronavirus, but a higher number of countries with confirmed cases. The Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, meanwhile, has reported a higher number of COVID-19 deaths in a lower number of countries.
While the data is sure to change as the disease works its way through the global population, WHO officials have said the vast majority of people infected by the coronavirus recover.
“We are not at the mercy of this virus,” Ghebreyesus said at a March 9 news conference. “All countries must aim to stop transmission and prevent the spread of COVID-19, whether they face no cases, sporadic cases, clusters or community transmission. Let hope be the antidote to fear. Let solidarity be the antidote to blame. Let our shared humanity be the antidote to our shared threat”
