Xenophobia and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic
increase in prejudice against Asians as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic was first reported in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019. The origins of the virus have subsequently led to an increase in acts and displays of sinophobia, as well as prejudice, xenophobia, discrimination, violence, and racism against people of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent and appearance around the world. With the spread of the pandemic and formation of hotspots, such as those in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, discrimination against people from these hotspots has been reported.
The pandemic saw a rise in antisemitism. Several reports documented conspiracy theories blaming Jews for "engineering and profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic". Hate groups falsely labeled Jews as "being a main vector of the virus".
Background
In the past, many diseases have been named after geographical locations, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Zika virus, but in 2015, the World Health Organization introduced recommendations to avoid this practice, to reduce stigma. In accordance with this policy, the WHO recommended the official name "COVID-19" in February 2020.
In early coverage of the outbreak, some news sources associated the virus with China in a manner that contributed to stigma. The journal Nature later published an apology for this type of coverage.
The public source identifies “Xenophobia and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic” as increase in prejudice against Asians as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Xenophobia, racism and related.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q84318312. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2015 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Xenophobia and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.