5 years of COVID-19 underscore value of coordinated efforts to manage disease – while CDC, NIH and WHO face threats to their ability to respond to a crisis

As the pandemic accelerated in 2020, U.S. hospitals -- including this one in New York City -- set up tents to diagnose patients with COVID-19. Misha Friedman via Getty Images

Five years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a global pandemic. The novel coronavirus, dubbed SARS-CoV-2, began as a “cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause” reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It had spread to 118,000 cases reported in 114 countries by March 11.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general at the time, said in a media briefing that day that “the WHO is deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.” He urged leaders to move quickly to scale up their emergency responses, saying that “all countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”