Confirmed, death and recovery cases of COVID-19 in Greater China 2022, by region

The new SARS-like coronavirus has spread around China since its outbreak in Wuhan - the capital of central China’s Hubei province. As of June 7, 2022, there were 2,785,848 active cases with symptoms in Greater China. The pandemic has caused a significant impact in the country's economy.

Fast-moving epidemic

In Wuhan, over 3.8 thousand deaths were registered in the heart of the outbreak. The total infection number surged on February 12, 2020 in Hubei province. After a change in official methodology for diagnosing and counting cases, thousands of new cases were added to the total figure. There is little knowledge about how the virus that originated from animals transferred to humans. While human-to-human transmission has been confirmed, other transmission routes through aerosol and fecal-oral are also possible. The deaths from the current virus COVID-19 (formally known as 2019-nCoV) has surpassed the toll from the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003.

Key moments in the Chinese coronavirus timeline

The doctor in Wuhan, Dr. Li Wenliang, who first warned about the new strain of coronavirus was silenced by the police. It was announced on February 7, 2020 that he died from the effects of the coronavirus infection. His death triggered a national backlash over freedom of speech on Chinese social media. On March 18, 2020, the Chinese government reported no new domestically transmissions for the first time after a series of quarantine and social distancing measures had been implemented. On March 31, 2020, the National Health Commission (NHC) in China started reporting the infection number of symptom-free individuals who tested positive for coronavirus. Before that, asymptomatic cases had not been included in the Chinese official count. China lifted ten-week lockdown on Wuhan on April 8, 2020. Daily life was returning slowly back to normal in the country. On April 17, 2020, health authorities in Wuhan revised its death toll, adding some 1,290 fatalities in its total count.