Since March of last year, the world has been dealing with a lot of stress due to COVID-19, which became the highlight of 2020. This pandemic has kept us all inside and distanced from society for almost a full year now. With 24.5  million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US alone. Public places will continue to follow safety measures and masks will still be required.

Jan 9th 2020, news spread about the unidentified pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization (WHO) were having doubts about the roots of what would later become the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that pneumonia like cases in Wuhan could have stemmed from a new coronavirus. There were 59 cases, and travel precautions were already being set. 

According to WHO, The COVID-19 disease  is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. People infected with COVID-19 will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness. Older people, and those with underlying medical problems are more likely to develop serious illness. 

By Jan 21st, 2020. A Washington resident becomes the first person in the United States with a confirmed case, after returning from Wuhan, Jan 15th. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) soon after deployed a team to help with investigation and potential use of contact tracing.

From Feb into Mar, COVID-19 was then declared a worldwide pandemic. On Mar 13th, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, which unlocked billions of dollars into federal funding to fight the disease’s spread. With 24,506 new cases by the end of March in the US . 

As a couple months passed, COVID-19 cases continued to rise, hitting the US reports new record for daily cases at 75,600, on July 16th. At this point, daily cases have seen 11 record totals in the past month alone. Montana, Hawaii, and Texas were among the 10 states reporting new record daily totals. 

As 2020 was slowly coming to an end, news about a COVID-19 vaccine began to surface around November. By Dec 31st, the CDC stated that 2.8 million people so far had received an initial vaccination. The US said on Dec 30th that about 14 million doses had been distributed, out of a total of 20 million allocated doses.

So far Jan 2021, COVID-19 cases continue to rise with 101 million cases worldwide. 25.6 million cases in the US. 24 million vaccinations have been given since Jan 27th in the US. slowly but surely, progress is being made. Who knows where we’ll be by the end of this year.