On Jan. 30, 2020, The WHO announced that the outbreak of a deadly and fast-spreading strain of coronavirus constitutes a global health emergency. The new coronavirus has sickened around 9,800 people worldwide and killed at least 213, all of them in China

The last time the WHO announced an international health emergency was in Jul. 2019 over the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before that, international emergencies were declared in 2016 for the Zika virus and in 2014 for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.