On Dec. 31, 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, with an unknown cause. What started as a mystery disease was first referred to as 2019-nCoV and then named COVID-19.
The timeline below tracks the development of the outbreak in 2021. For other developments, visit Devex’s COVID-19 timelines for 2020 and 2022.
Dec. 28 — India issues first emergency use authorization for Corbevax, a new COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in the U.S., and licensed to Indian biotech company Biological E. Limited. According to a press release, the vaccine is more than 90% effective against the “Ancestral-Wuhan strain” of COVID-19, and more than 80% effective against the delta variant in terms of preventing symptomatic infection.