COVID-19, more commonly known as Coronavirus disease 2019, is a new strand of a common virus that is infecting people across the globe. Related to the Severe Acute Respiratory Virus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), this strand has not yet been seen in humans and a vaccine is currently unavailable.
The outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has since spread. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a pandemic on Wednesday, March 11 after more than 118,000 cases of the virus were reported across 114 countries.