Epidemiology of the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Several Remarkable Pandemics

Abstract

COVID-19 is a newly discovered infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic started at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, China and spread rapidly across the world, especially in North and South America or Europe. The number of infected cases in the developed countries in North America and Europe or South America is extremely high, whereas its number in the developing countries of Africa or Southeast Asia is not so high; therefore, the COVID-19 is different from the usual infectious disease outbreaks. This article introduces the epidemiology of COVID-19, comparing with other historical infectious disease outbreaks.