COVID-19 Turning into a Pandemic

Today, an economic, political or social event wherever it occurs around the world has the power to affect the whole world at certain levels in a short time. Although the COVID-19 epidemic was initially seen as a virus-induced health problem, over time, it had a great power to affect not only human health, but also economic, social, and political life in different aspects, and it has led to deep and powerful changes that have not been experienced in the world until now.

5.2.1 Outbreak of COVID-19

With Coronaviruses (CoV), which the world is not a stranger to historically, humans have actually faced two members of this large virus family in the twenty-first century before COVID-19. For example, in 2003, it appeared under the name of “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV),” and in 2012, it appeared on the world stage under the name “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV).“ However, COVID-19, the type of this family of viruses we encounter today, is quite different from the coronaviruses we have met before, because the transmission rate of this virus was faster than the previous family members and, unlike the other two types, it managed to spread throughout the world in a very short time. COVID-19, the third of the coronavirus species transmitted from animals to humans(zoonotic), first appeared in Wuhan. It is claimed to originate from bats sold in the Huanan Seafood Retail Market (Bruinen De Bruin et al. 2020). Therefore, the first known case of the COVID-19 outbreak is seen in Wuhan City in Hubei Province of China. The first COVID-19 patient was diagnosed on December 10, 2019, and the first death was recorded on January 9, 2020 (The World Bank 2020). China announced the COVID-19 outbreak to the world on December 31, 2019.

5.2.2 GlobalDimension of COVID-19

After the first COVID-19 case in China, it was observed that it will spread all over the world in a short time due to the high rate of transmission.

As of May 21, 2020, according to WHO data, a total of 4,833,186 cases and 323,256 deaths occurred worldwide. According to WHO data, the distribution comparison of COVID-19 cases in terms of continents is given in Fig. 5.2.

Fig. 5.1 WHO coronavirus disease (COVID-19) dashboard. Source World Health Organization (2020)

Fig. 5.2 Situation by WHO region. Source World Health Organization (2020)

Examining Fig. 5.2, as of May 21,2020, Europehad the highest number of cases after the American continent. The countries where the highest number of COVID- 19 cases are reported are the USA, Russia, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Turkey, France, Iran, India, and Peru. COVID-19 was described as the most seriously threatening epidemic to public health since the Spanish Flu in 1918 (Loayza and Pennings 2020). As of September 2020, the total number of cases worldwide was 28,606,726, 19,288,985 patients recovered and 917,417 people died.

5.3