COVID-19 GLOBAL PANDEMIC: INFOGRAPHIC TIMELINE

By: Habtamu Girma Demiessie

Note to Readers: this piece is prepared to feed COVID-19 informatics updates at http://www.eajp.org, the official website of East African Journal of Pastoralism (EAJP). EAJP is a bi-annual academic Journal published by Jigjiga University, Ethiopia.

As we note from history, deadly pandemics have always been inherent to human civilizations. In the past two centuries alone, the world has seen a total of eight major pandemics. In the 20th century three outbreaks recorded as global pandemic: the historic ‘Spanish Influenza’ of 1918, (killed over 100 Million people): the ‘Asian flu’ of 1957 (killed 1.1 million people) and the ‘Hong Kong flu’ of 1968 (killed 1 million people worldwide)
The 21st century has seen five pandemic outbreaks: N1H1 in 2009 (‘575,400 killed), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome –SARS (with 7 to 17% fatality rate) in 2002, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome – MERS (with 35% fatality rate) in 2012, and Ebola which peaked in 2013-14 (with 25% to 90% fatality rate).
Currently the world is struggling with the fifth pandemic in 21st century, the coronavirus pandemic- COVID-19.
In late December 2019, a new pneumonia of unknown cause was identified in Wuhan pro, People’s Republic of China (PRC). In subsequent days and weeks, massive laboratory studies undertaken on the cause of the newer pneumonia. On 11 February 2020, World Health Organization officiate the disease outbreak in China as caused by coronavirus, naming the disease COVID-19.
Earlier medical investigations about COVID-19 reported the disease ‘an extremely contagious but not especially fatal, and that in the majority of cases, it is no worse than the seasonal flu’. As medical studies goes on, however, the diseases can causes serious respiratory infections that would lead to death. Subsequent medical studies then reported the risk of death from COVID-19 between 1 and 4 per cent.
As of early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic was very much centered in China, with over 90% of reported cases located there. In late January, the disease had begun spread out of China. In the mentioned period, the two hardest hit nations outside China were Japan and Korea. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020. As of 31 January 2020, COVID-19 had spread to 19 countries with 106 confirmed cases.
By Mid February 2020, the WHO has reported 68,584 COVID-19 cases and 1666 confirmed death in China. The spread of the disease went up to 26 countries in the world, where WHO report on February 16 recorded 355 COVID-19 cases outside China with no death report. By 28 February, 2020, COVID-19 affected countries mount to 50, with global COVID-19 cases were 83,631, with 2858 deaths recorded.
The spread of the disease even mounting day on day, and on March 11, 2020 WHO declared the disease a global pandemic. By March 31, 2020 WHO reported 693,224 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 33,106 deaths across the world. On the turn of April, on April 2, 2020 global COVID-19 cases top one million, with death tolls surge 51,000. As of April 5, 2020 COVID-19 cases tally 1.22 million and 65,711 death tolls reported worldwide.
As a matter of fact, the nature of the disease extremely detrimental on human life, with its toll on the economic and psycho-social lives of people is severe. This is because containment measures required the disruption to work processes, the limitations on meetings and travel. Bloomberg economics, in its March issue, dubbed COVID-19 an economic pandemic, to signify counting the cost of the cure is getting dear than the problem itself.
OECD estimated the economic cost of Covid-19 to the world to be close 2.7 trillion USD, a size of GDP of Britain. Reports on world stoke exchange markets depicted the three weeks of damages of covid-19 is even worse than the three years of great depression of 1930`s, and the 2008 financial crisis (later economic crisis).
While those costs are incurred at the starting days of the outbreak, one can imagine how the cost would count as corona-days count.
Ethiopia announced the first case of coronavirus on March 13 2020. Since then Coronavirus has taken the single most topic grabbing the dialogue among the Ethiopian society. The government of Ethiopia has also considered the issue a number one national agenda, where a number of measures and actions taken to fight the spread of the disease.
In a bid to curb the spread of the disease thereby limiting the movement of people, the government announced for schools & universities to shut-down; also large portion of personnel in the public service were set to stay home. Despites those steps, many still fear Ethiopia is yet to count the cost of this global pandemic.
By April 5, 2020, Ethiopia has recorded the first COVID-19 deaths (two deaths), and the total cases in the country reached 43. With the tally of Covid-19 cases incessantly increasing, the problem is likely to surge and last longer. And the government of Ethiopia already told its people to remain at home & protect themselves from the virus, sending clear message to Ethiopians across the board to prepare for the worst.
 
REFERENCES
Book/Newspaper/Magazine Sources

1. Africanews (March 31/2020), Coronavirus ‘corroding’ sports betting in East Africa
2. Baldwin, R. and Weder di Mauro B. (March 2020), Economics in the Time of COVID-19, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), CEPR E-Book,ISBN: 978-1-912179-28-2, CEPR Press, London, UK.
3. Bronwyn Bruton (March 24/2020), What does the coronavirus mean for Africa?, REUTERS
4. Fetzer, T., Hensel, Lukas., Hermle, J. Roth, C (March 6, 2020), Coronavirus Perceptions And Economic Anxiety, First version.
5. POLITICO (March 19/2020), Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How: A crisis on this scale can reorder society in dramatic ways, for better or worse. Here are 34 big thinkers’ predictions for what’s to come, POL I T ICO MAGAZ INE

Web Sources

1. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/2009-influenza-h1n1-timeiline
2. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)
3. https://www.who.int

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