Coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19, is a new virus that hasn’t caused illness in humans before, but it's now impacting the U.S., and more specifically, the DMV region. Chinese health officials announced in December 2019, that they were investigating a pneumonia outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China.

At that time, it was reported that many of the cases were linked to a seafood and animal market in Wuhan, but health officials have since reported that the outbreak was caused by a novel coronavirus, which has been spreading across the globe.