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The spread of the coronavirus is now a pandemic, officials at the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general. Dr. Tedros called for countries to learn from one another’s successes, act in unison and help protect one another against a common threat. (McNeil, 3/11)

Even as he raised the health emergency to its highest level, Tedros said hope remains that COVID-19 can be curtailed. And he urged countries to take action now to stop the disease. "WHO has been in full response mode since we were notified of the first cases," Tedros said. "And we have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear." (Chappell, 3/11)

For weeks now, the WHO has hesitated to make the pandemic declaration, for fear of inciting panic or prompting some countries to flag in their efforts, even though many epidemiologists believed the coronavirus had already spread to pandemic levels. But on Wednesday, Tedros noted the widespread scale of the outbreak. “There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives,” he said. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of coronavirus cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries climb even higher." (Wan, 3/11)

The pandemic label doesn’t require new WHO recommendations. But the move could get more resources to a rapidly worsening situation, some health experts said. “I hope that it adds urgency to efforts to mitigate it, because those efforts need urgency,” said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. (McKay, Calfas and Ansari, 3/11)

More than 120,000 people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, still mostly on the Chinese mainland, according to data provided by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. But that proportion is shrinking by the day as the epidemic is appearing to subside in China while cases spike elsewhere, especially in Europe and in the Middle East. (Winsor and Jacobo, 3/12)

Social media is chattering about Stephen King’s “The Stand,” a novel revolving around a weaponized flu that kills almost all humans and animals on the planet. Although it came out in 1978, sales of the trade paperback were up 25% in the first eight weeks of 2020, while purchases of the hardcover more than tripled, according to NPD BookScan. So many readers were trying to draw parallels between the book and the current coronavirus outbreak that Mr. King took to Twitter over the weekend to debunk the idea. (Gamerman, 3/11)

Wall Street went into a deep slump Wednesday, falling so far and so fast that the Dow Jones industrial average officially tipped into a bear market, ending a record 11-year stock rally. The bear market reflects a 20 percent fall from record highs, which the Dow hit less than a month ago, and came after the coronavirus officially became a pandemic. The World Health Organization’s declaration Wednesday reflected its alarm that countries aren’t working quickly and aggressively enough to fight the disease covid-19, caused by the coronavirus. (Telford and Heath, 3/11)