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- As of April 10, the COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 1.6 million people and killed at least 102,000 worldwide, leaving countries scrambling for protective resources and struggling to treat new patients.
- Even as outbreaks have stormed the globe, many world leaders denied the severity of the virus at first.
- Mixed messaging from politicians across the globe led to a late start for countries containing the virus outbreak in China, Italy, the US, and others.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
We watched the case counts rise in China. Healthcare workers shared harrowing accounts from the frontlines as China panic-built hospitals in a matter of days.
Doctors weren't sure how to treat this new coronavirus, and the Chinese government eventually locked down an estimated 50 million people to contain the disease.
But it took some world leaders months to take the threat seriously.
As death toll creeps higher every day, over one-third of the world has now been placed under lockdown, and countries are scrambling to halt the spread of COVID-19.
Here are eight world leaders who didn't take the novel coronavirus seriously at first, possibly putting their countries at greater risk for infection during crucial early moments.
Chinese authorities downplayed the threat of the outbreak when it first began in December, failing to communicate crucial information, and allowing millions of people to travel throughout the world.
Reports of the novel coronavirus first surfaced in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but researchers now suspect it was circulating in November.
On December 31, the government released a statement to the World Health Organization saying the diseases was "preventable and controllable."
By late January, Chinese authorities identified the illness to be a new strain of coronavirus and acknowledged that it could spread from human-to-human contact. But the government allowed millions of people to travel before initiating lockdowns.
The mayor of Wuhan said 5 million people left the city before the lockdown began, and The New York Times reported at least 7 million people left in January travel was banned.
As the outbreak worsened, the government was accused of suppressing healthcare workers who warned of the virus's spread, and downplaying reports on the number of reported cases and deaths.
The US Intelligence Committee has reportedly determined that President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party spread misinformation and lied about the severity of the outbreak. As of Friday, China has reported more than 82,000 infections and at least 3,340 deaths, but many believe the real number is far higher.
After reporting little to no new infections over the last couple weeks, China has lifted the lockdown on the city of Wuhan.
Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte downplayed the coronavirus infections in February, and the country's foreign minister accused the media of inflating information about the spread of the illness.
Italy has become the third-most infected country and the epicenter of the deadliest outbreak in the world, with more than 18,800 deaths as of April 10.
Though Italy has initiated one of the most sweeping nationwide lockdowns to date, mixed messaging in late February when cases began to rise led to a slowed government response.
On February 23, Prime Minister Conte downplayed the spread of the virus by attributing a rise in numbers to an increase in testing. A few days later, Italy's foreign minister Luigi Di Maio accused the media of inflating the severity of the virus by stating that only "0.089%" of Italians was under quarantine and calling the news coverage an "infodemic."
At that point in the outbreak, social distancing measures were initiated on a local basis. Even the mayor of Milan — a city only miles from the center of the outbreak in Lombardy — promoted the idea that people could still go out with a "Milan doesn't stop" campaign. Tourist attractions and cathedrals were kept open, and people didn't hesitate to leave their homes. According to The New York Times, at least 2,300 deaths occurred during the mixed messages early on.
But as cases continued to surge, the government took a far more serious approach, implementing a nationwide lockdown and warning that the rest of the world needs "to be ready."
President Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed the virus, calling it a "hoax" early on and claiming to have everything completely under control.
Throughout January, February, and March, Trump consistently downplayed the coronavirus outbreak in the US, saying things like, "We have it totally under control," "It will disappear," and, "America will again and soon be open for business."
At a campaign rally in late February, Trump referred to the coronavirus as a "new hoax" formed by the Democratic Party, and in early March, he minimized its threat by comparing it to the seasonal flu.
The US is now the global epicenter of the outbreak, with more than 486,000 confirmed cases and at least 18,000 deaths as of Friday. Many attribute the surge in cases to a lack of federal guidance and blunders from the Trump administration's coronavirus task force early on.
In the first few weeks of the outbreak, the US experienced a severe lack in testing, mixed messaging with social distancing protocols, and confusion over when the nation would return to normalcy.
The country still doesn't have a nationwide lockdown — each state has set its own guidelines and eight states have yet to issue stay-at-home orders. With the existing orders, about 95% of America's population, or about 306 million people, are now under some form of lockdown.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- A third of the global population is on coronavirus lockdown — here's our constantly updated list of countries and restrictions
- A California doctor who's been on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak for the past 2 months says patients are now afraid to go to the hospital
- It has been 3 months since the first coronavirus case was reported. These photos show the 10 moments that defined the crisis.
SEE ALSO: Photos show how China's novel coronavirus outbreak unfolded as Wuhan's 76-day lockdown ends
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