In December 2019, a coronavirus, termed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in Wuhan, China. It is the cause of a pandemic called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), with millions of infections diagnosed worldwide.
As of March 2024, there have been over 700 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with over 7 million deaths. In the U.S., there have been over 100 million cases with 1.2 million deaths.1
Although the COVID-19 virus appears to have originated in Wuhan, China, it is still unclear exactly how the viral spread occurred. Since the virus has a similar structure to a bat coronavirus, it is suspected that it may have originated from bats. The most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was SARS-CoV-2 animal-to-human transmission; however, the transmission origin has not been definitively identified.2,3
