2021, issue 46, Marc Hannappel, Viola Dombrowski, Oul Han, Lukas Schmelzeisen, Matthias Kullbach: On December 31st 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) office in Beijing is informed of several cases of pneumonia of unknown origin. In the following days, similar cases with the same symptoms are being reported to the WHO. From January 11th onwards, the increasing evidence suggest that this could be the outbreak of a novel disease.