2020 COVID-19 News Quiz | WHO, Japan's Three Cs, Tokyo Games and Vaccines

WHO determined on January 30 that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, or PHEIC. It announced the disease name COVID-19 on February 11 and assessed on March 11 that COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic. A PHEIC determination and a pandemic characterization were not the same procedure or made on the same date.

COVID-19 is the name of the disease, while SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus that causes it. News reports sometimes used a general term such as “coronavirus,” but the formal names distinguish the illness from its pathogen.

The April 7 declaration covered Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, Hyogo and Fukuoka. On April 16, the designated area was expanded to all 47 prefectures. It is therefore inaccurate to say that the entire country was covered from April 7.

The Three Cs are closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowded places with many people and close-contact settings involving conversation at short distance. The expression summarized concrete environmental conditions discussed in 2020; it was not simply a collection of similar-sounding words.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games were postponed to 2021, but the name Tokyo 2020 was retained. The mismatch between the year of competition and the branded event name can cause confusion when reading later records.

A virus's genetic sequence provides essential information about what a test should detect. WHO noted that sequence sharing enabled countries to diagnose patients and develop rapid diagnostic tools. Sharing the sequence alone could not determine every future mutation or guarantee that the outbreak would end.

The ACT-Accelerator was broader than vaccine purchasing. It was launched as an international partnership to speed the development and production of tests, treatments and vaccines and to help make those tools equitably accessible.

COVAX was the vaccine pillar of the ACT-Accelerator. It sought to accelerate vaccine development and manufacturing and promote equitable access. It was neither a virus name nor the name of a particular vaccine product.

WHO's Emergency Use Listing evaluates available evidence about a product's quality, safety and efficacy during a public-health emergency and can support decisions by countries and procurement bodies. A WHO listing did not automatically grant domestic authorization in every country; national regulators retained their own procedures.

An infodemic is an excess of information during a disease outbreak, including accurate information as well as misinformation and disinformation, that makes trustworthy guidance harder to find. It is not another name for misinformation alone or for a new pathogen.