The world of Tzu Chi March 2020(Vol.120)

TZU CHI 120 07 Covid-19: an overview Cases of Covid-19 first emerged in early December 2019, when a mysterious illness was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China. The cause of the disease was soon confirmed as a new kind of coronavirus related to the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the disease was labelled as the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (2019-nCoV). Since then, the infection has spread to numerous countries around the world. In late January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” in view of the growing scale of the outbreak. On February 11, 2020, the WHO announced that the disease has been officially named Covid-19, an abbreviation of “coronavirus disease 2019”. The virus that causes this disease is referred to as the Covid-19 virus. As of March 1, 2020, the disease has spread to 58 countries outside China, with 87,137 confirmed cases and 2,977 deaths reported globally. Sources: World Health Organization (WHO), New Scientist