2019 (MMXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2019th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 19th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 10th and last year of the 2010s decade.
This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year.[1]
Up to that point, 2019 had been described as the "best year in human history" by some newspapers and media outlets in the United States, including The New York Times and WNYC.[2][3]