In December 2019, an outbreak of atypical pneumonia was discovered, later revealed to be due to a new virus identified as SARS-CoV-2, responsible for causing the coronavirus disease . The purpose is brings the main changes and discoveries, after a year that PHEIC was declared. We argue that after one year since PHEIC was declared, a lot has changed since then, in this sense, carried out a bibliographic review. We conducted a survey of articles published in the PUBMED and Google Scholar databases, from January 2020 to January 2021, which released data from studies related to transmission, treatment, vaccines, new variants for COVID-19. After the novel virus spread to other countries and caused hundreds of deaths, the World Health Organization issued its alarm on January 30, 2020, known as PHEIC. After a year that the alarm was given a lot has changed. The first major change was the beginning of a COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. Many discoveries were made, from a better understanding of transmission, treatment, vaccines and challenges with new strains that arose after selective pressure.