The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, as the virus spread far beyond its origin in China. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had risen thirteenfold in two weeks, while the number of affected countries had tripled. At that point, more than 118,000 cases had been reported in 114 countries, with over 4,200 deaths. The WHO stressed that the word pandemic described the geographic spread of the disease, not its severity in any one place, and that governments could still act to slow transmission. For the steel industry, the declaration marked a turning point. Demand in Europe and North America, which had held up in January and February, now faced shutdowns in carmaking, construction and manufacturing. Within days, steelmakers on both sides of the Atlantic began announcing furnace idlings and output cuts to match supply with a rapidly falling order book.
Source: TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/covid-19-officially-declared-a-pandemic-by-the-who-as-deaths-pass-4000/
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