WP Slate | Goodbye World

The novel coronavirus belongs to the same family of viruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). COVID-19, as the disease is known, produces mild symptoms in most people, but can also lead to severe respiratory illness.

But compared to SARS and MERS, COVID-19 has spread strikingly fast: While MERS took two and a half years to infect 1,000 people, and SARS took roughly four months to hit that figure, COVID-19 reached 1,000 cases in just 48 days.

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, underscoring the speed and tenacity with which the virus had spread.