The COVID-19 pandemic
A coronavirus kills millions and stops the world for two years.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3.3 years
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
SARS-CoV-2 is identified in Wuhan in December 2019 and declared a pandemic in March 2020. Reported deaths exceed seven million and excess-mortality estimates run to 18–27 million. Most of humanity experienced some form of movement restriction. mRNA vaccines were designed within days of the genome being published and deployed within a year — by far the fastest vaccine development in history, built on decades of prior work.