70 Fun Facts About COVID-19

On which date did the World Health Organization assess the COVID-19 outbreak as having become a pandemic?

The WHO had already declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern six weeks earlier, when 7,818 infections had been confirmed.

What does the "19" in COVID-19 refer to?

WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus spelled it out: CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for the year the outbreak was first identified.

The word "coronavirus" comes from the Latin for what?

Under an electron microscope the virions have a fringe of bulbous projections that reminded virologists of the solar corona; the word was first used in print in Nature in 1968.

Wuhan, where the outbreak began, is the capital of which Chinese province?

With nearly 14 million people it is China's seventh-most-populous city and a major rail interchange, which helped the virus spread during the Chinese New Year migration.

On which date did the WHO issue the official names COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2?

WHO guidance since 2015 has avoided place names and groups of people in disease names, which is why "Wuhan coronavirus" was never adopted.

What provisional name did the WHO give the virus in January 2020?

The n stood for novel; the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses replaced it with SARS-CoV-2 the following month.

The virus enters human cells through the receptor for which enzyme?

That receptor is most abundant on type II alveolar cells in the lungs, which is why the lungs take the worst of the disease.

In which month and year did the WHO declare COVID-19 no longer a public health emergency of international concern?

Several outlets reported that the pandemic was therefore "over"; the WHO pointed out it does not declare pandemics ended and still counts cholera as one that began in 1961.

Which country was the first in the world to introduce a national lockdown?

It was also the first European nation with a major outbreak and on 19 March 2020 overtook China as the country with the most reported deaths.

Europe's first confirmed case, on 24 January 2020, was in which French city?

By 17 March every country in Europe had a confirmed case, and by the following day more than 250 million Europeans were in lockdown.

By 17 March 2020 every European country had reported at least one death except which one?

San Marino, by contrast, ended up with one of the highest per-capita death rates in the world during the first wave.

Which continent was the last to record confirmed COVID-19 cases?

Its research stations held out until December 2020, when cases were confirmed at a Chilean base.

Which cruise ship was quarantined in the Port of Yokohama in early 2020?

At least 712 of the 3,711 people aboard were infected; passenger Gay Courter later published a book about it called Quarantine!.

Which Wuhan ophthalmologist warned colleagues of early infections, was admonished by police, and died in early 2020?

He was 34. An official inquiry later exonerated him and Wuhan police formally apologised to his family.

The lockdown of Wuhan, which lasted nearly three months, officially ended on which date?

It was the first lockdown of the pandemic; the city reopened once Hubei province had gone without new domestic cases.

By early April 2020, roughly how many people worldwide had been told to stay at home?

That was more than half of humanity, spread across more than 90 countries and territories.

Which country's lockdown, covering around 1.3bn people, was the largest of all?

At the same time nearly 300 million Americans, about 90% of the US population, were under some form of stay-at-home order.

What did the WHO use to name variants of concern such as Alpha, Delta and Omicron?

The scientific PANGO lineage names carried on underneath, so Omicron was still B.1.1.529 to virologists.

The Omicron variant was first detected in which country in late 2021?

The WHO declared it a variant of concern within days; by 1 January 2022 Europe had passed 100 million cases in the surge it caused.

The Alpha variant, identified in 33 countries by 2 January 2021, was first discovered where?

Its changes to the spike protein made it more infectious, and it forced Britain into a third national lockdown that month.

What is the PANGO lineage designation of the Omicron variant?

B.1.1.7 was Alpha, B.1.617.2 was Delta and P.1 was Gamma; Omicron's sub-lineages BA.1 to BA.5 were tracked as separate variants of concern until March 2023.

Who was Sweden's state epidemiologist during the pandemic, from 2013 until his resignation in 2022?

He publicly denied that herd immunity was the plan, but emails later uncovered by the media suggested otherwise.

What word did the WHO coin in March 2020 for the flood of incorrect information about the virus?

Confirmation bias and other cognitive shortcuts have been linked to belief in the resulting conspiracy theories, including vaccine hesitancy.

The 2020 Great Barrington Declaration argued lockdowns could be avoided through what approach?

Its online signature list, which anyone could join by ticking a box, turned out to include "Mr Banana Rama" and the serial killer Harold Shipman.

Great Barrington, the town that gave the anti-lockdown declaration its name, is in which US state?

It was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank based there.

Who, aged 90, was the first person outside a trial to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, on 8 December 2020?

Brian Pinker was first with the AstraZeneca jab a month later, and Elle Taylor first in the UK with Moderna in April 2021.

The first non-trial vaccination in December 2020 took place in which English city?

A Lancet study later estimated that UK vaccination prevented 507,000 deaths in its first year.

Which regulator became the first in the world to approve an mRNA vaccine, on 2 December 2020?

The FDA followed with an emergency use authorisation later that month and authorised Moderna's vaccine a week after that.

Which Hungarian-born biochemist shared the 2023 Nobel in Medicine for discoveries enabling mRNA vaccines?

She shared it with immunologist Drew Weissman; the pair had been demoted and denied grants for years before the pandemic vindicated their work.

The Nobel-winning mRNA breakthrough replaced uridine with which modified nucleoside?

Without the swap, injected mRNA triggered inflammation and was destroyed before it could make any protein.

Which vaccine, sold as Comirnaty, was the first to be fully approved by the US FDA, on 23 August 2021?

It had also been the first vaccine authorised for emergency use by a stringent regulator, back in December 2020.

The Comirnaty mRNA vaccine has to be kept within which temperature range before use?

The ultracold requirement meant dry-ice shipping and special freezers, a logistical hurdle Moderna's version largely avoided.

BioNTech, the company behind Comirnaty, is headquartered in which German city?

Founder Uğur Şahin started the project after reading about the Wuhan outbreak at home there on 24 January 2020, and predicted German schools would close by April.

Uğur Şahin decided to start a vaccine after reading a Wuhan report in which German outlet?

Back-of-envelope maths from Wuhan's population and transport links convinced him a best case was two million deaths worldwide.

The Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine uses a modified adenovirus taken from which animal as its vector?

The vector is called ChAdOx1; several rival vaccines used human adenoviruses instead.

Under what brand name did the Serum Institute of India market the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine?

In the European Union the same vaccine was renamed Vaxzevria on 25 March 2021.

Which COVID-19 vaccine's initial course was a single dose?

It did not need freezing either, so it was expected to matter most in low- and middle-income countries.

Which was the world's first registered COVID-19 vaccine, approved by Russia on 11 August 2020?

Its legal name is Gam-COVID-Vac; the brand name came from the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

Russia's first registered COVID-19 vaccine was developed at which research institute?

Brazil's regulator Anvisa refused it in 2021 after finding replication-competent adenovirus in the samples supplied.

Novavax's Nuvaxovid belongs to which category of vaccine?

Its makers prefer to call it a "recombinant nanoparticle vaccine"; it was developed with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

China's CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines belong to which category of vaccine?

India's Covaxin, Russia's CoviVac and Iran's COVIran Barekat used the same old-fashioned approach.

Roughly how many doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered worldwide by August 2024?

Anaphylaxis, the most feared side effect, turned up in about one person per 250,000 to 400,000 doses.

Operation Warp Speed's stated goal was to deliver how many vaccine doses by January 2021?

It started with about $10 billion from the CARES Act and was up to about $18 billion by October 2020.

Who headed Operation Warp Speed from May 2020 to January 2021?

After the change of administration he was told not to use the name Operation Warp Speed anymore.

Anthony Fauci had led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since when?

He held the post for 38 years, through HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Zika, before retiring in 2022.

When President Trump was hospitalised with COVID-19 in October 2020, where was he treated?

He received an experimental Regeneron antibody cocktail along with an antiviral and a steroid.

Which US law from 1950 was invoked to speed up manufacturing of medical equipment?

It dates from the Korean War and lets the president order companies to prioritise government contracts.

Which glucocorticoid is recommended to reduce mortality in patients with low oxygen levels?

It was the first drug shown to save lives in the disease, in the UK's RECOVERY trial in June 2020.

Paxlovid combines nirmatrelvir with which HIV antiviral?

The HIV drug is there to slow the breakdown of the main ingredient, not to attack the coronavirus itself.

Loss of taste combined with loss of smell has been reported in as many as what share of COVID-19 cases?

That combination, in people with no previous ear, nose and throat problems, became one of the disease's most distinctive tells.

Rapid antigen tests that can be done at home are also known by what name?

The more accurate PCR test has to be run in a laboratory, which is why the cheap home strips carried the load in 2021 and 2022.

The US CDC defined social distancing as keeping approximately what distance from others?

Australia, Germany, Italy and Spain settled on 1.5 metres instead, roughly five feet.

Which 1957 Isaac Asimov novel portrays a planet whose people live by social distancing?

Its Solarians meet only by hologram and find physical presence repulsive, which read very differently in 2020.

Netflix released the first season of Tiger King on which date?

Its timing, days into lockdown for much of the world, helped it to 34.3 million viewers in ten days by Nielsen's count.

Who coined the term "Great Resignation" in May 2021?

The management professor predicted a sustained mass exodus; by February 2023 he said the quit rate had fallen back as if the pandemic never happened.

Zoom, the video app that defined lockdown, was founded in 2011 by which former Cisco engineer?

Zoom's mobile app was the fifth most downloaded of 2020, behind only TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

On what date did the IOC and Tokyo organisers announce that the 2020 Olympics would be postponed?

It was the first postponement in the history of the modern Games; earlier editions had been cancelled outright but never rescheduled.

Wimbledon 2020 was cancelled on 1 April 2020, the first cancellation since when?

The All England Club had reportedly been paying pandemic insurance for years and collected a large payout.

In which month was the 2020 Masters golf tournament played, the only time it has not been held in April?

Dustin Johnson won it without patrons in the gallery, setting a scoring record of 20 under par.

To what date was the 2020 Kentucky Derby, normally run on the first Saturday in May, delayed?

For the first time the Derby was not the opening leg of the Triple Crown; the Belmont Stakes had already been run in June.

The WHO's May 2022 estimate of excess deaths through 2021 was how many, nearly three times the reported COVID toll?

Most of the unreported 9.5 million were believed to be direct deaths from the virus rather than knock-on effects.

In which month and year did China relax its zero-COVID policy after nationwide protests?

Weeks later the State Council narrowed its definition of a COVID death to respiratory failure alone, at a time when hospitals reported being overwhelmed.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the face of the global response, is from which country?

He was appointed in July 2017 and was the first WHO chief who was not a medical doctor by training.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 laboratory in which year?

Many of its staff trained at the BSL-4 lab in Lyon, France; in February 2020 a team there led by Shi Zhengli was first to publish the new virus's genome.

Despite jokes about its name, what happened to Corona beer's US sales in the first three months of 2020?

Sales were up 24% year on year in the first three weeks of March, most likely because Americans stuck at home were drinking more.

Initial estimates of the virus's basic reproduction number (R0) in January 2020 fell in which range?

A later analysis put it nearer 5.7, and Omicron was later reckoned to be several times more transmissible again.

On which date did the WHO declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern?

The pandemic assessment followed on 11 March; the emergency was declared over in May 2023.

Which country's pandemic strategy was known as K-Quarantine?

It relied on mass screening, localised quarantines and public alerts about infected people's movements.

Which city's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was linked to many early cases?

In May 2020 China CDC director George Gao initially ruled the market out as the origin because animal samples there tested negative.

Which country's response was noted for having the most severe travel restrictions?

China and Australia were regarded as having the strictest lockdown regimes, while Singapore used 'circuit breaker' lockdowns.