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Five Years Ago, First Covid-19 Death Reported in China, Marking Start of Global Pandemic

Jan 11, 2025, 07:54 AM

Five years ago, on January 11, 2020, the world witnessed the first reported death from Covid-19 in China, marking the beginning of a global pandemic that would paralyze the planet for over three years. The virus, later named SARS-CoV-2 by the World Health Organization (WHO), was initially detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province, where it was linked to a mysterious pneumonia outbreak. The first death was reported by Chinese authorities, with the patient succumbing to the illness on January 9, 2020. The WHO was alerted to the outbreak on December 31, 2019, and by January 1, 2020, had established an Incident Management Support Team to manage the emerging crisis. As the virus spread, it led to significant global economic and societal disruption, with the WHO officially declaring a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, and later classifying the outbreak as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The impact of Covid-19 was profound, resulting in nearly 7 million deaths worldwide by May 2023, before the WHO declared the end of the public health emergency on May 5, 2023.