

March 15: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Americans should cancel gatherings of 50 or more people for two months. March 13: President Donald Trump declares a national emergency. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, testifies before Congress that the U.S.
#Los angeles lockdown timeline pro
Most college and pro leagues follow suit. Hanks is the first American celebrity to announce a diagnosis. Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he is “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.”Īctor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, say they’ve tested positive for the virus while at work in Australia. March 11: The World Health Organization declares the novel coronavirus a pandemic. (Sharon Pulwer for The Washington Post) (Sharon Pulwer For the Washington Post) Mount Sinai Health System hospital staff in Manhattan get a refresher course in March on the proper use and fit of personal protective equipment, which remained scarce for months. This timeline, based on data gathered and analyzed by The Washington Post and hundreds of articles written by its journalists, tells the story of a singular period - the year of covid-19. Racial and economic inequalities compounded. Misinformation and lies spread as quickly as the pathogen itself. Scientists developed vaccines in record time. Over the next 12 months, leaders bungled opportunities to quell its spread, case levels rose, fell and rose again, hope endured, and more than 525,000 people lost their lives. We didn’t know it then, but the virus already had infected thousands of Americans. Schools closed, streets emptied and commuters stayed home. It was the day of a high-profile diagnosis, major event cancellations and an official designation: pandemic. Weeks before American life ground to a halt, the coronavirus was blazing a mostly silent path across the country, burrowing deep into people’s lungs and launching an attack that would expose nationwide vulnerabilities, scar a generation and reshape the world.įor most people, March 11 was when the covid-19 crisis first became real.
