This story was originally published in February 2020. While the maps in the story are automatically updated with latest available statistics, the text may include information that is no longer current. For the latest guidelines on coronavirus prevention and mitigation, please visit the CDC's or WHO's information pages.Since December 2019, the novel coronavirus pandemic has touched nearly every country on the planet, and upended the lives of hundreds of millions of people, according to official and unofficial statistics compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.The novel coronavirus belongs to the same family of viruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). COVID-19, as the disease is known, produces mild symptoms in most people, but can also lead to severe respiratory illness.