when was covid announced

COVID-19 was first officially announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “public health emergency of international concern” on 30 January 2020, and later declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020.

Quick Scoop

To unpack “when was covid announced,” there are two key dates people usually mean:

• 30 December 2019–January 2020: First alerts and early reports
  Chinese authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan to WHO on 31 December 2019, which is when COVID-19 first entered the global health radar.

• 30 January 2020: Global emergency announced
  WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest alert level under international health regulations.

• 11 February 2020: “COVID-19” name announced
  WHO announced the official disease name “COVID-19” on this date, replacing earlier informal labels.

• 11 March 2020: Pandemic announced
  WHO announced that COVID-19 was now characterized as a pandemic, acknowledging sustained global spread across many countries and regions.

Short answer for most people

If you’re asking when COVID was “officially announced as a pandemic” , the widely quoted date is 11 March 2020.

If you mean when it was first treated as a global emergency , that’s 30 January 2020.

“COVID-19 didn’t ‘start’ when it was announced; it was already spreading. Those announcement dates are when the world formally recognized the scale of the crisis.”

TL;DR:

• First WHO alert about the Wuhan outbreak: 31 Dec 2019.

• WHO global emergency (PHEIC): 30 Jan 2020.

• Name “COVID-19” announced: 11 Feb 2020.

• WHO pandemic announcement: 11 Mar 2020.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.