It depends on how your definition of novel...Coronavirus may be older and rarer than the locust plague you're referring to, but it is indeed still a novel epidemic.
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This is as old as Pharaoh. https://apnews.com/517bb5588fc94403f797a2045095dcac
"New, larger wave of locusts threatens millions in Africa"
"some 20 times the size of the first [wave]".
"The new swarms include 'young adults,' voracious bugs 'that eat more than the adult ones,'"

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