Terrorist Attacks Against COVID-19-Related Targets during the Pandemic Year 2020: A Review of 165 Incidents in the Global Terrorism Database

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic enabled a situational type of terrorism with mixed racist, anti-government, anti-science, anti-5G, and conspiracy theorist backgrounds and motives. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to identify and characterize all documented COVID-19-related terrorist attacks reported to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) in 2020. METHODS: The GTD was searched for all COVID-19-related terrorist attacks (aimed at patients, health care workers, and at all actors involved in pandemic containment response) that occurred world-wide in 2020. Analyses were performed on temporal factors, location, target type, attack and weapon type, attacker type, and number of casualties or hostages. Ambiguous incidents were excluded if there was doubt about whether they were exclusively acts of terrorism. RESULTS: In total, 165 terrorist attacks were identified. With 50% of incidents, Western Europe was the most heavily hit region of the world. Nonetheless, most victims were listed in Southeast Asia (19 fatalities and seven injured). The most frequent but least lethal attack type concerned arson attacks against 5G telephone masts (105 incidents [60.9%] with only one injured). Armed assaults accounted for most fatalities, followed by assassinations. Incendiary and firearms were the most devastating weapon types. CONCLUSION: This analysis of the GTD, which identified 165 COVID-19-related terrorist attacks in 2020, demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic truly resulted in new threats for COVID-19 patients, aid workers, hospitals, and testing and quarantine centers. It is anticipated that vaccination centers have become a new target of COVID-19-related terrorism in 2021 and 2022.