The case-fatality ratio for the 2003 SARS outbreak was much higher than that of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic even though the transmission was lower .
On 12 January 2020 , the World Health Organization ( WHO ) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City , Hubei Province , China , which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.