A year ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced a pandemic of the disease caused by a new type of coronavirus infection.
For the first time, the Chinese authorities reported an outbreak of unknown pneumonia in Wuhan city (central Hubei province) on December 31, 2019. Then the probable sources of the coronavirus were named animals, in particular, bats, which were traded in the city market.
From China, the coronavirus spread to other countries. During January-February 2020, restrictive measures were introduced in most states, including curfews, quarantine, an emergency, restrictions on movement, stoppage of work of enterprises, writes Rosbalt.
Currently, there are 21 states in the world with more than a million infected, including the United States (29.2 million, with 528 thousand deaths), India (11.3 million, 158 thousand), Brazil (11, 1 million, 268 thousand), Russia (4.3 million, 88 thousand) and Great Britain (4.2 million, 125 thousand). In total, according to official data, more than 118 million people worldwide have confirmed the coronavirus, of which more than 2.6 million have died from the disease.
The World Health Organization is currently warning of a third wave of COVID-19.
According to the head of the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Hans Kluge, the end of the pandemic cannot be expected until early 2022. According to him, the incidence will remain at a high level throughout 2021, but the situation will become “more predictable and manageable” compared to the previous year, since scientists now know much more about the coronavirus.
So far, not a single drug has been found that is guaranteed and effective to cure coronavirus infection in humans. Nevertheless, vaccines against coronavirus have been developed and registered, and about 100 million people have already been vaccinated in the world. The first country to register such a drug under the name Sputnik V was Russia (August 11, 2020). In 2020, vaccines from the American corporations Pfizer and Moderna, Chinese drugs Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino, as well as a vaccine from the German company BioNTech were registered.
The consequences of the pandemic have led to a drop in gross domestic product in almost all countries of the world. According to a UN report, the world economy contracted by 4.3%. This is more than 2.5 times more than during the 2009 global financial crisis. At the same time, the total sovereign public debt of all countries at the end of 2020 reached 98% of world GDP, follows from the report of the International Monetary Fund.
At the same time, according to the International Energy Agency, the pandemic has led to a 5.8% reduction in global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions (in absolute terms – 2 billion tons), which is a record since the Second World War.