Here is a detailed timeline of coronavirus outbreak. Instead of the misleading and panic-creating numbers about infections and death cases, this info is focussing on key dates and the timeline of the outbreak. This will help bring some perspective about our ignorance – and those of the WHO, CDC, RKI (who consulted our governments), our governments and the lack of preparation all the way until March – for which we now pay dearly with one of the world’s biggest economic downturns ever and our democracies and freedom.

Please note the “key date”: “January 23, 2020 – At an emergency committee convened by the World Health Organization, the WHO says that the Wuhan coronavirus does not yet constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”

Timeline Corona outbreak:

December 1, 2019

  • The symptom onset date of the first patient identified.

December 7, 2019

  • Five days after illness onset, the 53-year-old wife of the first patient, who had no known history of exposure to the market also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalized in the isolation ward.

December 15, 2019

  • The Wuhan doctors were finding cases that indicated the virus was spreading from one human to another.

December 25, 2019

  • Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan were found to be suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and were quarantined. Later, hospitals in the Wuhan witnessed an “exponential” increase in the number of cases in late December that cannot be linked back to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang warned a group of other doctors about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled “severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)”. He urged them to take protective measures against infection.

December 31, 2019

  • The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declared that their investigation has not found “any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection.” China contacted the World Health Organization (WHO) three weeks after doctors first started noticing the cases.

January 3, 2020

  • Summons issued to Li Wenliang by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau accusing the doctor of “spreading rumours.”Dr Li signed a statement at a police station acknowledging his “misdemeanor” and promising not to commit further “unlawful acts.” China’s National Health Commission ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease. On the same day, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered to stop testing samples from Wuhan related to the new disease and destroyed all existing samples. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released another statement, reiterating that preliminary investigations have shown “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections.”

January 6, 2020

  • 59 people in the central city of Wuhan have been sickened by a “pneumonia-like illness”, as per a report by The New York Times published on January 6. On the same day, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a level 1 travel watch. It advised travellers to Wuhan to avoid contact with ‘living or dead animals, animal markets, and sick people.’

January 8, 2020

  • Chinese medical authorities claim to have identified the virus, reiterating that it still found “no clear evidence of human-to-human transfer”.

January 11, 2020

  • The Wuhan City Health Commission released Q&A sheet emphasizing that most of the unexplained viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan have a history of exposure to the South China seafood market and “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.”

January 12, 2020

  • Dr Li Wenliang was hospitalized on January 12. He started coughing and developed a fever after unknowingly treating a patient with the coronavirus. Later, Wenliang’s condition deteriorated so badly that he was admitted to the intensive care unit and was given oxygen support.

January 13, 2020

  • The first case of novel coronavirus was reported outside China involving a 61-year-old Chinese woman in Thailand, who had visited Wuhan. However, Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health said the woman had not visited the Wuhan seafood market and had come down with a fever on January 5. The woman had visited a different, smaller market in Wuhan, in which live and freshly slaughtered animals were sold.

January 14, 2020

  • The World Health Organization in its report stated: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

January 15, 2020

  • Japan reported its first case of coronavirus and its Health Ministry said the patient had not visited any seafood markets in China. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in a statement said that the possibility of “limited human-to-human transmission” cannot be ruled out. Despite the fact that Wuhan doctors knew that the virus is “contagious”, city authorities allow 40,000 families to gather and share home-cooked food in a Lunar New Year banquet, as per the article in National Review.

January 17, 2020

  • Chinese health officials confirm that a second person has died in China. The United States responds to the outbreak by implementing screenings for symptoms at airports in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.

January 19, 2020

  • The Chinese National Health Commission declared the virus “still preventable and controllable”. A day later, the head of China’s national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by “human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected”.

January 20, 2020

  • China reports 139 new cases of the sickness, including a third death. The National Institutes of Health (USA) announces that it is working on a vaccine against the coronavirus. “The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards the development of a vaccine,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

January 21, 2020

  • The CDC announced the first case of the coronavirus in the US. The patient had returned from China six days ago.

January 22, 2020

  • A WHO delegation conducted a field visit to Wuhan and concluded, “deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan.” Nearly two months after the first case of the virus was reported, Chinese authorities announced their ‘first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan.’ By this time, a significant number of Chinese citizens have traveled abroad as “asymptomatic, oblivious carriers”. Wuhan says it will “temporarily” close its airport and railway stations for departing passengers following news that the death toll from the Wuhan Coronavirus has risen to 17. Chinese authorities confirm at least 547 cases in the mainland.

January 23, 2020

  • At an emergency committee convened by the World Health Organization, the WHO says that the Wuhan coronavirus does not yet constitute a public health emergency of international concern. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/23/health/who-wuhan-coronavirus-bn/index.html

January 26, 2020

  • The China Association of Travel Services reports that all tours, including international ones, will be suspended.

January 28, 2020

  • Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom in Beijing. At the meeting, Xi and the WHO agree to send a team of international experts, including US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff, to China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak.

January 29, 2020

  • The White House announces the formation of a new task force that will help monitor and contain the spread of the virus, and ensure Americans have accurate and up-to-date health and travel information, it says.

January 30, 2020

  • The United States reports its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus. On the same day, the WHO determines that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

January 31, 2020

  • The Trump administration announces it will deny entry to foreign nationals who have traveled in China in the last 14 days.

February 1, 2020

  • Dr Wenliang tested positive for coronavirus on February 1 and died six days later.

February 2, 2020

  • A man in the Philippines dies from the Wuhan coronavirus — the first time a death has been reported outside mainland China since the outbreak began.

February 3, 2020

  • China’s Foreign Ministry accuses the US government of inappropriately reacting to the outbreak and spreading fear by enforcing travel restrictions.

February 4, 2020

  • The Japanese Health Ministry announces that ten people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship moored in Yokohama Bay are confirmed to have the coronavirus.The ship, which is carrying more than 3,700 people, is placed under quarantine scheduled to end on February 19.

February 10, 2020

  • Xi inspects efforts to contain the Wuhan coronavirus in Beijing, the first time he has appeared on the front lines of the fight against the outbreak. On the same day, a team of international experts from WHO arrives in China to assist with containing the coronavirus outbreak.

February 11, 2020

  • The WHO names the coronavirus Covid-19.

February 14, 2020

  • A Chinese tourist who tested positive for the virus dies in France, becoming the first person to die in the outbreak in Europe.

February 19, 2020

  • Passengers who have tested negative for the novel coronavirus begin disembarking from the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship, despite mounting evidence from infectious disease experts they could unknowingly be carrying the virus back into their communities.

February 21, 2020

  • The CDC changes criteria for counting confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the United States and begins tracking two separate and distinct groups: those repatriated by the US Department of State and those identified by the US public health network.

February 25, 2020

  • In an effort to contain the largest outbreak in Europe, Italy’s Lombardy region press office issues a list of towns and villages that are in complete lockdown. Around 100,000 people are affected by the travel restrictions.

February 29, 2020

  • A state health official announces that a patient infected with the novel coronavirus in Washington state has died, marking the first death due to the virus in the United States. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declares a state of emergency, directing state agencies to use all resources necessary to respond to the outbreak.

March 3, 2020

  • Officials announce that Iran will temporarily release 54,000 people from prisons and deploy hundreds of thousands of health workers as officials announced a slew of measures to contain the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. It is also announced that 23 members of Iran’s parliament tested positive for the virus.

March 4, 2020

  • The CDC formally removes earlier restrictions that limited coronavirus testing of the general public to people in the hospital, unless they had close contact with confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the CDC, clinicians should now “use their judgment to determine if a patient has signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and whether the patient should be tested.”

March 8, 2020

  • Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signs a decree placing travel restrictions on the entire Lombardy region and 14 other provinces, restricting the movements of more than 10 million people in the northern part of the country.

March 9, 2020

  • Conte announces that the whole country of Italy is on lockdown.

March 11, 2020

  • The WHO declares the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic. WHO says the outbreak is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus.

March 19, 2020

  • At a news conference, officials from China’s National Health Commission report no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for the first time since the pandemic began.

March 24, 2020

  • Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach agree to postpone the Olympics until 2021 amid the outbreak.

April 2, 2020

  • According to the Department of Labor, 6.6 million US workers file for their first week of unemployment benefits in the week ending March 28, the highest number of initial claims in history. Globally, the total number of coronavirus cases surpasses 1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally.

April 8, 2020

  • China reopens Wuhan after a 76-day lockdown.

Continued here:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/06/health/wuhan-coronavirus-timeline-fast-facts/index.html

Key sources:

Source of chart: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca