section_path: History/2020
section_name: 2020
paragraph_text: 2020
  
  On 11 January, WHO was notified by the Chinese National Health Commission that the outbreak was associated with exposures in the market, and that China had identified a new type of coronavirus, which it isolated on 7 January.
  
  Initially, the number of cases doubled approximately every seven and a half days. In early and mid-January, the virus spread to other Chinese provinces, helped by the Chinese New Year migration. Wuhan was a transport hub and major rail interchange. On 10 January, the virus' genome was shared publicly. A retrospective study published in March found that 6,174 people had reported symptoms by 20 January. A 24 January report indicated human transmission was likely occurring, and recommended personal protective equipment for health workers. It also advocated testing, given the outbreak's "pandemic potential". On 30 January, 7,818 infections had been confirmed, leading WHO to declare the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), upgrading it to a pandemic on 11 March. On 31 January, the first published modelling study warned of inevitable "independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally" and called for "large-scale public health interventions".
  
  By 31 January, Italy indicated its first confirmed infections had occurred, in two tourists from China. The WHO announced on 11 March its assessment that the situation could be characterised as a pandemic. On 19 March, Italy overtook China as the country with the most reported deaths.
  
  By 26 March, the United States had overtaken China and Italy as the country with the highest number of confirmed infections. Genomic analysis indicated that the majority of New York 's confirmed infections came from Europe, rather than directly from Asia. Testing of prior samples revealed a person who was infected in France on 27 December 2019 and a person in the United States who died from the disease on 6 February.
  
  In October, WHO reported that one in ten people around the world may have been infected, or 780 million people, while only 35 million infections had been confirmed.
  
  On 9 November, Pfizer released trial results for a candidate vaccine, showing a 90 per cent effectiveness in preventing infection. That day, Novavax submitted an FDA Fast Track application for their vaccine. On 14 December, Public Health England reported that a variant had been discovered in the UK's southeast, predominantly in Kent. The variant, later named Alpha, showed changes to the spike protein that could make the virus more infectious. As of 13 December, 1,108 infections had been confirmed in the UK. On 4 February 2020, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar waived liability for vaccine manufacturers in all cases except those involving "willful misconduct".