Coronavirus spread in Wuhan, China from 22 January 2020 on a large scale. China stopped movement of people from Wuhan town to other cities and constructed four hospitals in ten days. On 28th January, at the Great Hall of the People on Beijing’s Tiananmen square, president Xi Jinping said to Director General of WHO that ‘”the epidemic is a devil” and “we can’t let the devil hide”.

There is a long tradition in China of comparing natural disasters, epidemics to demons, gods or evil spirits. Manchurian plague epidemic (1910-11) was seen as gods sent in which 60,000 people died. At the time of plague outbreak, China’s ruling Qing dynasty was weak but the epidemic did not breach Chinese borders because Chinese doctor Wu imposed draconian measures of quarantine and cremation of plague victims.  

On Monday, the WHO chief said that “world must prepare for potential pandemic”. A month earlier the world thought that it was an epidemic and now it has turned to a pandemic. WHO defined pandemic as “the worldwide spread of a new disease” while epidemic is confined to “a community or a region”.

The WHO chief’s comments came as officials in Italy, France and the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Afghanistan) scramble to limit the spread of the outbreak. On Monday after one month of COVID-19, the world share markets plunged and warned the repeat of 2008 great recession for economy. Two other coronavirus out breaks happened in 2003 (SARS) and 2012 (MERS).

In 1918 Spanish flu broke out in spring and circled the globe for next three years. In the poor countries, less well-off people of the society suffered most from Spanish flu. India lost 18 million (1 crore and 80 lakh) people to Spanish flu more than the death toll of the entire First World War (WWI). 1918 Pandemic had long-term consequences which accelerated the end of WWI.

We will have to wait and see what consequences this outbreak will have on society and economy of the middle income countries.