COVID-19 (abbreviated from Coronavirus Disease 2019) – an acute infectious disease of the respiratory system caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was first recognized and described in November 2019, in central China (Wuhan city, Hubei province), during a series of cases that started the pandemic of this disease. The standard method of diagnosing infection is a reverse transcriptional polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) real-time RT-PCR test, performed from a nasopharyngeal swab or sputum sample, which provides results in hours to two days. Antibody analysis from a blood serum sample can also be used as a diagnostic method to obtain a result within a few days. It can also be diagnosed by looking at a combination of symptoms, risk factors, and a chest CT scan that shows signs of pneumonia. The WHO position based on data from March 3, 2020 says that the case fatality rate (CFR, i.e. the number of deaths per registered cases of the disease) is 3.4%. On January 30, 2020, WHO announced a public health emergency of international concern as a result of the spreading COVID-19 epidemic. On March 11, 2020, WHO declared the COVID-19 incidence since November 2019 a pandemic Confirmed COVID-19 cases by country (the map animation covers the period from January 12 to February 29, 2020). By April 14, 2020, depending on the source, from 1,848,000 up to 1979 thousand cases of disease were found worldwide (including around 803,000 in the EU), of which from 117,000 up to 126 thousand deaths (including the EU – 77 thousand deaths).
