Fig. 1.

Timeline of the global COVID-19 pandemic. a The timeline spans December 31st, 2019, to July 12th, 2020. It shows the significant events related to the number of cases and deaths globally. b As of July 12th, 2020, the representative world map shows the global distribution and the incidence of reported COVID-19 cases in each country. Clusters of pneumonia that had unknown origins were first reported from Wuhan on December 31st, 2019, to the China National Health Commission. On January 13th, 2020, the WHO reported the first cases outside of China in Thailand. The virus was named SARS-CoV-2 by the WHO on February 11th, 2020, and the disease was named COVID-19. On February 14th, 2020, Africa had its first confirmed case of coronavirus after a person in Egypt tested positive for the disease. In late February and early March, multiple international reports of SARS-CoV-2 confirmed over 82,000 people had been infected and over 2800 patients had died worldwide. The WHO declared COVID-19 officially a pandemic on March 11, 2020, as the viral disease swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4000 people. When Italy was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 7000 newly infected coronavirus cases were registered per day in the country on March 21st, 2020. Seven days later the number climbed to >600,000 cases with the death toll reaching 27,000. However, the true scale of the outbreak was thought to be significantly higher. Confirmed worldwide infections reached 1,000,000 with a global death toll of 50,000 on April 1st, 2020. Within the next 2 weeks, the United States reported 500,000 cases registered and a death toll surpassing Italy’s with 19,468 deaths. Throughout April, U.S. officials alleged that China was underreporting the total number of cases and deaths; on April 25th, 2020, there were no new cases and death reports for 10 days in a row, while the global death toll surpassed around 200,000. SARS-CoV-2 is continuing to spread across the world, with approximately 12.7 million confirmed cases in 213 countries. More than 560,000 people have died. The United States alone has more than 3.3 million confirmed cases, significantly more than the total confirmed cases reported by any other country (the next highest being Brazil with more than 1.8 million) as of July 12th 2020