The 2019 novel coronavirus, also known as 2019-nCoV or Wuhan coronavirus, is the virus causing the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. The first suspected cases were officially reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019, with the illness appearing just over three weeks earlier on 8 December 2019. It has subsequently been identified as a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA coronavirus based upon genomic sequencing of a sample from a person with pneumonia.