Since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic one year ago Thursday, new Yelp data showed nearly a half million businesses opened in America during that time, an optimistic sign of the state of the U.S. economic recovery.

Between March 11, 2020 and March 1, 2021, Yelp has seen more than 487,500 new businesses listing on its platform in the United States. That's down just 14% compared with the year-ago period. More than 15% of the new entities were restaurant and food businesses.

The novel coronavirus, first discovered in China, is believed to have surfaced in Wuhan in late 2019, before spreading rapidly around the world, infecting 118 million people and causing 2.6 million deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.