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World|life|April 8, 2020 / 11:40 AM
It started with a warning. It turned into a pandemic that has transformed life as we know it

AKIPRESS.COM - At 1.38pm on 31 December, a Chinese government website announced the detection of a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in the area surrounding the South China seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million people, The Guardian reports.

The outbreak was one of at least a dozen to be confirmed by the World Health Organization that December, including cases of Ebola in west Africa, measles in the Pacific and dengue fever in Afghanistan. Outside China, its discovery was barely noticed.

Over the next 100 days, the virus would freeze international travel, extinguish economic activity and confine half of humanity to their homes, infecting more than a million people and counting, including the British prime minister, the heir to the British throne, an Iranian vice-president, and Idris Elba. By the middle of April, more than 75,000 would be dead.

But all that was still unimaginable at the end of December, as 11.59pm ticked over to midnight, fireworks exploded and people embraced at parties and in packed streets. 

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