Why coronavirus disease called pandemic
Answers
Explanation:
The coronavirus outbreak has been labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
It is a term that the organisation had refrained from using before now.
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was now using the term because of deep concern over "alarming levels of inaction" over the virus.
What is a pandemic?
A pandemic describes an infectious disease where we see significant and ongoing person-to-person spread in multiple countries around the world at the same time.
The last time a pandemic occurred was in 2009 with swine flu, which experts think killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Pandemics are more likely if a virus is brand new, able to infect people easily and can spread from person-to-person in an efficient and sustained way.
Coronavirus appears to tick all of those boxes.
With no vaccine or treatment that can prevent it yet, containing its spread is vital.
Answer:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has described the novel coronavirus as a pandemic for the first time. In a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern about trajectory of the disease, which has rapidly expanded across the globe in the months since it was first announced in China.
Outbreaks have been reported in more than 110 countries with more than 118,000 confirmed cases and 4,200 deaths worldwide, as global stock markets continue to falter. Case counts of the coronavirus, which causes the disease named COVID-19, have risen sharply in places like Italy, Iran, and South Korea. Meanwhile, it has begun to spread across the United States as well, with more than 900 cases and 29 deaths.
“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher,” Ghebreyesus said in his announcement. “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.”
The announcement comes after weeks of speculation among officials and the news media that this emergency had already reached pandemic levels—even as public health authorities stopped just short of officially labeling it so.