Compare the timeline at https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline...

Compare the timeline at https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline... Here's a shortened version: 1 January 2020 – After Wuhan Municipal Health Commission report of a cluster of cases of pneumonia (31 Dec. 2019) WHO sets up Incident Management Support Team (...) putting the organization on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak 5 January 2020 – WHO publishes first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus 10 January 2020 – WHO publishes guidelines with advice to all countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, based on what was known at the time 12 January 2020 – China publishes genetic sequence of COVID-19 13 January 2020 – Thailand confirms cases 14 January 2020 – WHO warns of limited human-to-human transmission 20-21 January 2020 – WHO field visit to Wuhan 22 January 2020 – WHO mission in Wuhan issues statement on evidence of human-to-human transmission 22-23 January 2020 – WHO boards assess whether the outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern, no consensus is reached, the Emergency Committee (EC) eventually settles to reconvene within 10 days after receiving more information 30 January 2020 – The EC reconvenes and consensus is reached, advises the Director-General that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Director-General accepted the recommendation and declared the novel coronavirus outbreak (2019-nCoV) a PHEIC. 3 February 2020 – WHO releases the international community's Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan 11-12 February 2020 – WHO convened a Research and Innovation Forum on COVID-19 16-24 February 2020 – WHO-China Joint mission on fact finding trip to China, eventually publishes a report on the findings. 11 March 2020 – WHO characterises COVID-19 as a pandemic. –––––– Of note may be here the last 10 days of January: No scientific consensus was reached regarding a PHEIC on 22-23 January, but was eventually declared on 30 Jan. as more data became available. (The first assessment was just a week after human-to-human transmission was confirmed.) A first response plan was published only 3 days thereafter. However, to declare a pandemic, this required still additional data, international conferences requiring some lead time for planning and scheduling, time consuming fact finding missions, reports…