The COVID-19 pandemic, also called the coronavirus pandemic, is a current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The outbreak started in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) called it a pandemic on 11 March 2020. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses gave the virus its name. , more than 34 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in more than 188 countries and territories. More than one million people have died of COVID-19, and more than 23 million people have become better.