Since surfacing in December in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus has spread to more than two dozen countries and resulted in the lockdown of some of China’s most hard-hit cities – home to more than 60 million. Worldwide fallout continues in the form travel restrictions, economic impact, and quarantines for recent visitors to China, as Chinese officials are criticized on their delayed response to containing the virus. Take a look at the short history of the outbreak in photos here.
Paramedics transport a man believed to be Hong KongÕs first Wuhan coronavirus patient to a hospital on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2019. Beijing has responded faster to the new threat than it did with SARS, but it still silences and punishes those who veer from the official line, with potentially damaging consequences. (Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times)Local residents struggle with riot police at the Fai Ming Estate after the Hong Kong government announced it would requisition an unoccupied housing project to house quarantined patients of the new viral coronavirus illness on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, in Fanling district of Hong Kong. Residents took the streets to oppose the plan to house quarantined patients or medical workers in their neighborhood. (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)First aid volunteers work to extinguish a fire set by local residents at a building of the Fai Ming Estate, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, in the Fanling district of Hong Kong. After the Hong Kong government announced it would requisition the unoccupied housing project to house quarantined patients of the new viral coronavirus illness, residents took to the streets to oppose the plan to house quarantined patients or medical workers in their neighborhood. (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)Construction workers drive excavators at the site of a new 1,000-bed field hospital being built to accommodate the increasing number of coronavirus patients on Jan. 24, 2020, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The hospital was set to be completed by February 3, 2020. (Getty Images)A worker wearing a protective suit uses a fogging machine to disinfect a business establishment, Feb. 9, 2020, in Shanghai. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)A woman wears a mask while carrying a dog in the street on Jan. 22, 2020, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. (Photo by Getty Images)A person wearing a mask shops the nearly bare shelves of a supermarket on Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, in Hong Kong. The death toll and the number of coronavirus infections continued to soar in China, according to official data released early Friday. (Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times)Chinese children wear plastic bottles as makeshift homemade protection and protective masks while waiting to check in to a flight at Beijing Capital Airport on Jan. 30, 2020 in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)Medical staff members cheer up a patient infected by the coronavirus in a hospital isolation ward on Jan. 28, 2020, in Zouping in China’s eastern Shandong province. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)Workers set up beds at an exhibition centre that was converted into a hospital on Feb. 4, 2020, in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province. – The Wuhan government said it planned to convert three existing venues, including a gymnasium and an exhibition centre, into hospitals to take in patients with mild symptoms of the new coronavirus. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a police officer operates a drone carrying a QR code placard near an expressway toll station on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020, in Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong Province. As a measure to help prevent and control novel coronavirus, an online register system for vehicles coming back to Shenzhen has been put into use since Feb. 8. To increase the efficiency, local police officers used drones to carry a QR code at the expressway exits for drivers to get registered with less contact with other people. (Lai Li/Xinhua via AP)Police officers and medical workers standby outside a residential complex after two people were confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020, in Hong Kong. (Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times)A dog wears a paper cup over its mouth on a street on Feb. 4, 2020, in Beijing. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)Thousands of couples attend a mass wedding held by the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification despite the spread of the coronavirus on Feb. 7, 2020, in Gapyeong-gun, South Korea. Some 4,000 people attended the mass wedding, which the church has been holding since the early 1960s. (Woohae Cho/Getty Images)A passenger from the cruise ship “World Dream” docked at Kai Tak cruise terminal, stands at the balcony, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020, in Hong Kong. The cruise ship carrying approximately 1,800 passengers remained quarantined in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour after several passengers from mainland China on a previous World Dream cruise were found to have the new coronavirus on returning home. (Kin Cheung/Associated Press)People wearing masks, attend a vigil for coronavirus whistleblower and Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, in Hong Kong. The death of the young doctor who was reprimanded for warning about China’s new virus triggered an outpouring of praise for him Friday and anger that communist authorities put politics above public safety. (Kin Cheung/Associated Press)Members of dragon dance crew wear face masks while while welcoming customers to a local gold shop for the tenth day of the Lunar New Year on Feb. 3, 2020 in Hanoi, Vietnam. As per Vietnamese tradition, the tenth day of the Lunar New Year is when the God of Wealth returns to heaven, creating the belief that buying gold then will bring good luck and prosperity throughout the year. (Linh Pham/Getty Images)Family members of Pakistani students studying in Wuhan, China, rally outside the Chinese Consulate for the evacuation of their relatives after the Chinese city was badly hit by the coronavirus, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020, in Lahore, Pakistan. (K.M. Chaudhry/Associated Press)Residents wearing face masks photograph fireworks celebrating the Lunar New Year on Jan. 28, 2020, in Macau, China. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)A Chinese worker wears a protective mask as he has his temperature checked in a nearly empty and shuttered commercial street on Feb. 12, 2020 in Beijing, China. The number of cases of a deadly new coronavirus rose to more than 44000 in mainland China Wednesday, days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global public health emergency. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
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