Ramaswami: IT was in the latter half of December 2019 that the cause of an illness that was spreading across Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China was ascertained to be a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Now, almost three months later, the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, has affected 195 countries and territories across the world, ie, the entire world has been gripped by the pandemic. We are warned by the World Health Organisation that the ‘pandemic is accelerating’, with it taking 67 days to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days since then to reach 200,000, and just four days after that to reach 300,000.