68 Fun Facts About COVID-19

On which date did the World Health Organization assess the COVID-19 outbreak as having become a pandemic?

On 11 March 2020 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the WHO's assessment that COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic, with more than 118,000 cases reported in 114 countries by then.

What does the "19" in COVID-19 refer to?

The 19 refers to the year 2019, when the outbreak was first identified; Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained the name as CO for corona, VI for virus and D for disease.

The word "coronavirus" comes from the Latin for what?

Corona is Latin for crown: under the electron microscope the virions' fringe of bulbous projections resembled a crown or the sun's corona, and the name first appeared in Nature in 1968.

Wuhan, where the outbreak began, is the capital of which Chinese province?

The city is the capital of Hubei, a central Chinese province on the Yangtze; with more than 11 million people and a major rail interchange, it seeded the spread during the Chinese New Year travel rush.

On which date did the WHO announce the official name COVID-19 for the disease?

WHO Director-General Tedros announced the disease name COVID-19 on 11 February 2020; the same day the virus taxonomy body ICTV named the virus SARS-CoV-2. WHO rules since 2015 keep place names and peoples out of disease names.

What provisional name did the WHO give the virus in January 2020?

2019-nCoV, with n for novel, was the WHO's interim name from January 2020; the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses renamed the virus SARS-CoV-2 a few weeks later.

The virus enters human cells by binding which enzyme on the cell surface?

The spike protein binds ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, which sits on type II alveolar cells in the lungs and on cells of the gut, heart and kidneys; lung damage follows from that entry route.

In which month and year did the WHO declare COVID-19 no longer a public health emergency of international concern?

On 5 May 2023 the WHO declared COVID-19 no longer a public health emergency of international concern; it does not formally declare pandemics over, and it has counted the seventh cholera pandemic, begun in 1961, as ongoing for decades.

Which country was the first in the world to introduce a national lockdown?

Italy imposed the first nationwide lockdown on 9 March 2020, extending Lombardy's restrictions to the whole country; on 19 March it overtook China as the country with the most reported deaths.

Europe's first confirmed case, on 24 January 2020, was in which French city?

France announced Europe's first three cases on 24 January 2020: a traveller from China treated in Bordeaux, announced first, and two patients in Paris hospitals.

Which continent was the last to record confirmed COVID-19 cases?

Antarctica went almost a year without the virus; its first cases were confirmed in December 2020 among 36 people at Chile's Bernardo O'Higgins research base.

Which cruise ship was quarantined in the Port of Yokohama in early 2020?

The Diamond Princess was quarantined at Yokohama from early February 2020; at least 712 of the 3,711 people aboard were infected, and passenger Gay Courter later published a memoir titled Quarantine!.

Which Wuhan ophthalmologist warned colleagues of early infections, was admonished by police, and died in early 2020?

Li Wenliang, 33, died of COVID-19 on 7 February 2020 after warning fellow doctors in a chat group in late December; a national inquiry exonerated him and the local police withdrew their reprimand and apologised.

The lockdown of Wuhan, which lasted nearly three months, officially ended on which date?

Begun on 23 January 2020 as the pandemic's first lockdown, it ended after 76 days on 8 April 2020, when outbound travel from the city resumed.

By early April 2020, roughly how many people worldwide had been told to stay at home?

An AFP tally on 2 April 2020 put the figure at 3.9 billion people, more than half of humanity, under confinement orders in more than 90 countries and territories.

Which country's lockdown, covering around 1.3bn people, was the largest of all?

India's lockdown from 25 March 2020 confined about 1.3 billion people, the largest anywhere; Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced it with four hours' notice.

What did the WHO use to name variants of concern such as Alpha, Delta and Omicron?

From May 2021 the WHO labelled variants of concern with Greek letters, Alpha through Omicron, to avoid stigmatising the countries where they were first found.

Which country first reported the Omicron variant to the WHO, in late 2021?

South Africa's scientists reported the Omicron variant to the WHO in late 2021 and it was named a variant of concern within two days; the surge it drove took Europe past 100 million cases by 1 January 2022.

The Alpha variant, identified in 33 countries by 2 January 2021, was first discovered where?

The Alpha variant was first sequenced in Kent in the UK in autumn 2020; its spike mutations made it more transmissible and drove England into a third lockdown in January 2021.

What is the PANGO lineage designation of the Omicron variant?

Omicron's PANGO lineage is B.1.1.529; the Pango system names lineages by descent, so its main sub-lineages were written BA.1 to BA.5, BA being the alias for B.1.1.529.

Who was Sweden's state epidemiologist during the pandemic, from 2013 until his resignation in 2022?

Anders Tegnell, state epidemiologist from 2013, fronted Sweden's no-lockdown strategy and left in March 2022 for a WHO post; his daily briefings made him a national figure.

The WHO's 2020 'infodemic' warning revived a word coined by which political analyst in 2003?

David Rothkopf coined 'infodemic' in a Washington Post column of May 2003 about the SARS outbreak; the WHO revived it in a situation report on 2 February 2020.

The 2020 Great Barrington Declaration argued lockdowns could be avoided through what approach?

The declaration proposed focused protection: shielding the elderly and vulnerable while letting the young live normally; its open signature list turned out to include "Mr Banana Rama" and the serial killer Harold Shipman.

Great Barrington, the town that gave the anti-lockdown declaration its name, is in which US state?

Great Barrington is in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, home of the American Institute for Economic Research, the libertarian think tank that sponsored the declaration in October 2020.

Who, aged 90, received the first dose of Britain's vaccine rollout on 8 December 2020?

Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old retired jewellery shop assistant, received the first dose of Britain's rollout at 6:31 am on 8 December 2020; Brian Pinker got the first AstraZeneca jab a month later.

The first non-trial vaccination in December 2020 took place in which English city?

The first dose of Britain's rollout was given at University Hospital Coventry at 6:31 am on 8 December 2020; the second recipient, 81-year-old William Shakespeare, came from nearby Warwickshire.

When did the US FDA grant its first emergency use authorisation for a COVID-19 vaccine?

The FDA's first emergency use authorisation for a COVID-19 vaccine came on 11 December 2020, nine days after Britain's regulator acted; a second vaccine, Moderna's, was authorised on 18 December.

Which biochemist shared the 2023 Nobel in Medicine for discoveries enabling mRNA vaccines?

Katalin Karikó shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with immunologist Drew Weissman; the University of Pennsylvania had demoted her in 1995, and their key paper appeared in 2005.

Which modified nucleoside did the Nobel-winning mRNA work use to avoid triggering immune alarms?

Swapping uridine for pseudouridine let synthetic mRNA slip past innate immune sensors; unmodified mRNA set off inflammation and was degraded before it could produce any protein.

What temperature range did the original 2020 guidance set for storing Comirnaty long-term?

The original guidance required storage at −80 to −60 °C in ultra-low freezers, shipped in dry ice; from early 2021 regulators also allowed two weeks at −25 to −15 °C and, later, a month at fridge temperature.

BioNTech, the company behind Comirnaty, is headquartered in which German city?

BioNTech was founded in Mainz in 2008 by Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci; the city on the Rhine is also where Gutenberg built his printing press.

What internal name did BioNTech give its COVID-19 vaccine programme, launched in January 2020?

BioNTech launched Project Lightspeed in late January 2020 to develop an mRNA vaccine against the new virus, designing 20 candidate constructs within weeks and taking four of them into trials.

The Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine uses a modified adenovirus taken from which animal as its vector?

The vector, ChAdOx1, is a weakened chimpanzee adenovirus chosen because humans lack pre-existing immunity to it; several rival vaccines used human adenoviruses instead.

Under what brand name did the Serum Institute of India market the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine?

The Serum Institute produced the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine as Covishield, the backbone of the country's rollout and of COVAX supplies; in the EU the same vaccine was renamed Vaxzevria on 25 March 2021.

Which COVID-19 vaccine's initial course was a single dose?

Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine, an adenovirus-vector shot, was authorised as a single dose in February 2021 and could be kept in an ordinary refrigerator, which suited low- and middle-income countries.

Which was the world's first registered COVID-19 vaccine, approved by Russia on 11 August 2020?

Sputnik V, named after the 1957 satellite, was registered by Russia on 11 August 2020 before its phase 3 trial had begun; the brand was chosen by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which financed it.

Russia's first registered COVID-19 vaccine was developed at which research institute?

The vaccine came from Moscow's Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which built it on two human adenovirus vectors, Ad26 and Ad5; Brazil's regulator Anvisa refused import in April 2021 over quality concerns.

Novavax's Nuvaxovid belongs to which category of vaccine?

Nuvaxovid is a protein subunit vaccine: lab-grown spike proteins assembled into nanoparticles with the Matrix-M adjuvant; Novavax developed it with funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

China's CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines belong to which category of vaccine?

CoronaVac and Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV are inactivated virus vaccines: whole coronavirus killed with beta-propiolactone and paired with an alum adjuvant; Bharat Biotech's Covaxin used the same long-established approach.

Roughly how many doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered worldwide by August 2024?

By August 2024 about 13 billion doses had been given worldwide, enough for more than 70% of the world's population to have had at least one; the count plateaued after 2022 as demand fell.

Operation Warp Speed's stated goal was to deliver how many vaccine doses by January 2021?

Operation Warp Speed, announced in May 2020, aimed to deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine by January 2021; it started with about $10 billion from the CARES Act.

Who headed Operation Warp Speed from May 2020 to January 2021?

Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born former head of GSK's vaccines division, served as Operation Warp Speed's chief scientific adviser from May 2020 until he resigned in January 2021.

Anthony Fauci had led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since when?

Anthony Fauci became NIAID director in 1984 and held the post for 38 years, through HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Zika, before stepping down at the end of 2022.

When President Trump was hospitalised with COVID-19 in October 2020, where was he treated?

Trump spent three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, from 2 October 2020, receiving Regeneron's experimental antibody cocktail, remdesivir and a steroid.

Which US law from 1950 was invoked to speed up manufacturing of medical equipment?

The Defense Production Act of 1950, passed during the Korean War, lets the president order companies to prioritise federal contracts; it was invoked in 2020 for ventilators, masks and later vaccine supplies.

Which glucocorticoid did the RECOVERY trial show in June 2020 cut deaths among patients on oxygen?

Dexamethasone was the first drug shown to save lives in COVID-19: Britain's RECOVERY trial reported in June 2020 that it cut deaths by about a third among ventilated patients and a fifth among those on oxygen.

Paxlovid combines nirmatrelvir with which HIV antiviral?

Ritonavir, a protease inhibitor used against HIV since 1996, is included as a booster: it blocks the liver enzyme CYP3A4 that would otherwise break nirmatrelvir down too quickly.

Which London venue housed the first NHS Nightingale field hospital, opened in April 2020?

The first NHS Nightingale hospital was built inside the ExCeL London exhibition centre in the Docklands in about nine days and opened on 3 April 2020, planned for up to 4,000 beds.

Rapid antigen tests that can be done at home are also known by what name?

Lateral flow tests detect viral proteins on a paper strip in about 15 minutes; they are less sensitive than laboratory PCR, but their low cost made them the workhorse of mass testing in 2021 and 2022.

The US CDC defined social distancing as keeping approximately what distance from others?

The CDC's guidance was to keep about six feet, or two metres, from people outside your household; the WHO advised at least one metre, while Germany and Australia settled on 1.5 metres.

Which 1957 Isaac Asimov novel portrays a planet whose people live by social distancing?

In The Naked Sun the Solarians live on vast estates, 'view' each other by hologram and find physical presence repulsive; detective Elijah Baley must overcome his own agoraphobia to investigate a murder there.

Netflix's lockdown hit Tiger King was released on which date in 2020?

Tiger King dropped on 20 March 2020, days into lockdown for much of the world, and reached 34.3 million US viewers in its first ten days by Nielsen's count.

Who coined the term "Great Resignation" in May 2021?

Anthony Klotz, a management professor at Texas A&M, coined 'Great Resignation' in a May 2021 Bloomberg interview predicting a wave of quitting; US resignations hit a record of more than 4.5 million a month in late 2021.

Zoom, the video app that defined lockdown, was founded in 2011 by which former Cisco engineer?

Eric Yuan, who had led engineering for Cisco's WebEx, founded Zoom in 2011; its daily meeting participants jumped from about 10 million before the pandemic to more than 200 million in March 2020.

On what date did the IOC and Tokyo organisers announce that the 2020 Olympics would be postponed?

The IOC and Japan announced the postponement on 24 March 2020, the first in the history of the modern Games; the 1916, 1940 and 1944 editions had been cancelled outright, never rescheduled.

Wimbledon 2020 was cancelled on 1 April 2020, the first cancellation since when?

Wimbledon had last been cancelled for World War II, from 1940 to 1945; the 2020 cancellation was announced on 1 April, and the All England Club's long-held pandemic insurance policy paid out around £114 million.

In which month was the 2020 Masters golf tournament played, instead of its usual April?

The 2020 Masters was moved from April to 12–15 November; Dustin Johnson won by five shots with no patrons present, and his 20-under-par total set a tournament record.

To what date was the 2020 Kentucky Derby, normally run on the first Saturday in May, delayed?

The Derby was pushed back to 5 September 2020 and run without spectators, Authentic winning; the Belmont Stakes, run on 20 June, had already been held, so for once the Derby did not open the three-race series.

The WHO's May 2022 estimate of excess deaths through 2021 was how many, nearly three times the reported COVID toll?

The WHO put excess deaths for 2020 and 2021 at 14.9 million, against 5.4 million reported COVID-19 deaths; the report said most of the gap was direct deaths from the virus that went unrecorded.

In which month and year did China relax its zero-COVID policy after nationwide protests?

After protests in late 2022 over a deadly Urumqi apartment fire, Beijing issued its 'new ten measures' on 7 December 2022, scrapping mass testing and centralised quarantine; infections then surged nationwide.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the face of the global response, is from which country?

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopia's former health and foreign minister, took office on 1 July 2017 as the first African head of the WHO and the first without a medical degree.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 laboratory in which year?

The institute's BSL-4 lab, built with French help and modelled on the Jean Mérieux laboratory in Lyon, was accredited in 2017 and formally began operating in January 2018, the first on the Chinese mainland.

Which Nintendo Switch game, released days into lockdown in March 2020, became a pandemic phenomenon?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrived on the Switch in March 2020 as much of the world went into lockdown and sold 13.4 million copies in six weeks, a record for the series.

Initial estimates of the virus's basic reproduction number (R0) in January 2020 fell in which range?

The WHO's first estimate, issued on 23 January 2020, put the basic reproduction number at 1.4 to 2.5; a later analysis of the early outbreak put it nearer 5.7.

On which date did the WHO declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern?

The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, its sixth such declaration, when 7,818 cases had been confirmed, all but 82 of them in China.

Which religious group's Daegu congregation was linked to South Korea's first big cluster in 2020?

A member of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, 'Patient 31', attended services in Daegu while infected in February 2020; more than 5,000 of the country's early cases were traced to the church.

The closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 were found in which animals?

The closest known relatives, such as RaTG13 from Yunnan and the BANAL viruses from Laos, are coronaviruses of horseshoe bats, sharing around 96 to 97 percent of their genome with SARS-CoV-2.

Which tennis star was deported from Australia in January 2022 over his vaccination status?

Novak Djokovic, unvaccinated, had his visa cancelled twice and was deported on 16 January 2022, the day before the Australian Open began; Rafael Nadal went on to win the title.