With multiple new cases confirmed in Europe at the weekend — and a rapid rise in infections in South Korea and Iran — virologists are warning that the coronavirus, or Covid-19, is now at “pandemic” stage.
But what does this mean and what are the implications?
What is a pandemic?
A pandemic, a word built from the Greek pan (“all”) and demos (“people”), is the term used by disease experts when epidemics are growing in multiple countries and continents at the same time.
Despite the fear that the word evokes, “pandemic” refers to the spread of a disease, not the disease's potency or deadliness. A pandemic means that a disease is widespread, over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people. The disease must also be infectious. Cancer affects many people around the world but is not infectious so cannot be called a pandemic.
A pandemic usually has self-sustaining lines of infection — so questions of who has it, when they had it and who they caught it from begin to include a large portion of the population across countries and continents. So, if the number of cases in Europe and the United States escalates with no clear connection back to China, it will fit the definition of a pandemic.
What’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?
An epidemic refers to an event in which a disease is actively spreading. Usually, this is an outbreak that has grown out of control but is often within one country or location. An epidemic refers to a sudden rise in the number of cases of a disease above what would normally be expected.
A pandemic is an epidemic on a greater geographic scale that affects a large number of people.
Is the coronavirus a pandemic? Given that the virus has now spread to 31 countries, across multiple continents, it satisfies the World Health Organisation’s definition of a pandemic. At the moment, WHO has only declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency.
What happens if WHO declares a pandemic?
If WHO declares a pandemic, it could have serious consequences.
According to WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan, a response to a pandemic would require national governments to action the “full mobilisation of health systems, facilities, and workers at national and subnational levels”, to “distribute personal protective equipment” and to “distribute antivirals, and other medical supplies in accordance with national plans”.
As such, a pandemic designation can be a significant challenge to some countries. When the WHO declared a pandemic for the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, the decision was criticised by some countries who felt that it caused unnecessary panic. Furthermore, the declaration forced many countries to spend a fortune on H1N1 vaccines but the strain of flu proved to be mild and relatively easy to contain.
The language from WHO has been darker in recent days. On Friday, the director-general said that the “window of opportunity is narrowing” to contain the coronavirus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the body responsible for public health in the United States, is already preparing for a pandemic.
What’s the economic impact of a pandemic?
According to the World Bank, the annual global cost of moderate to severe pandemics is about $570 billion (about £440 billion) or 0.7 per cent of the world’s income.
The Sars outbreak in 2003-04 — which only infected about 8,000 people — caused about $50 billion in damage to the global economy and, though its mortality rate is lower, coronavirus could be even more destructive. This is partly because of the world’s greater reliance on China than 17 years ago. China represented just 5 per cent of the world economy during Sars — now it accounts for a fifth, and about a third of global growth. In addition, China’s economy could be more vulnerable now because of the growth of its service sector.
Bill Gates has suggested that the pandemic could overwhelm global health systems and kill 10 million Africans.
Writing for The Telegraph on Monday, Tom Stevenson says that we are already moving into phase two of the markets’ response to viruses. After phase one — looking at the pattern of previous outbreaks and hoping it all blows over — is the “spreadsheet and profit warning” phase. “This is when the authorities focus on policy measures to get businesses back on their feet and companies begin managing their investors’ expectations,” he says.
Fears over the potential economic impact could be one of the reasons why WHO has not yet declared a pandemic.
What’s an example of a pandemic?
Pandemics can vary greatly in scale and potency but examples include HIV, swine flu, Spanish flu (1918) and H1N1. Some of the most deadly pandemics in history were the Black Death, which killed up to 200 million people in the Middle Ages, and smallpox, which killed about 300 million people in the 20th century.
Preventing the spread of a disease varies depending on a number of factors, including the virulence of the disease, healthcare provision, and being able to detect the spread.
A big issue with the coronavirus is that it appears it can be spread by carriers who have minimal or no symptoms, making it harder to track and contain. For example, among the passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship who have tested positive for the virus, about half had no obvious symptoms.
Some patients have fallen ill from the virus long after they were exposed. This raises questions about the virus’s incubation period which is currently thought not to exceed 14 days, an assumption that is the basis of many quarantine procedures.
Source from MSN News
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