When did the epidemic start?

The epidemic broke out on December 16. Since December 2019, some hospitals in Wuhan, Hubei Province have successively discovered multiple cases of pneumonia of unknown origin with a history of exposure to the South China Seafood Market, which were confirmed to be acute respiratory infectious diseases caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus infection.

On February 11, 2020, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced in Geneva, Switzerland, that the pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus would be named "COVID-19". On February 22, the National Health Commission issued a notice that the English name of "new coronavirus pneumonia" was revised to "COVID-19". On March 11, the World Health Organization considered the current COVID-19 epidemic to be called a global pandemic.

Incidence Characteristics

According to the existing case data, the main manifestations of new coronavirus pneumonia are fever, dry cough, fatigue, etc., and a few patients are accompanied by upper respiratory tract symptoms such as nasal congestion, runny nose, diarrhea, etc. and gastrointestinal symptoms. Severe cases often develop dyspnea after 1 week, and severe cases rapidly progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock, difficult-to-correct metabolic acidosis, coagulopathy, and multiple organ failure.

It is worth noting that severe and critically ill patients may have moderate to low fever or even no obvious fever during the course of the disease. Mild patients only show low-grade fever and mild fatigue, without symptoms of pneumonia. Judging from the current cases, most patients have a good prognosis, and a few patients are in critical condition. The elderly and those with chronic underlying diseases have a poorer prognosis. Children's cases have relatively mild symptoms.