Pandemic

In news:

• The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared Covid-19 outbreak as a global pandemic.

About 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.
• According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic is declared when a new disease for which people do not have immunity spreads around the world beyond expectations.
• Declaring a pandemic has nothing to do with changes to the characteristics of a disease, but is instead associated with concerns over its geographic spread.
• Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis.
• One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century.
• The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
• Other recent pandemics include the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).
• The World Health Organization (WHO) previously applied a six-stage classification that describes the process by which a novel influenza virus moves from the first few infections in humans through to a pandemic.
• In February 2020, WHO clarified that, "there is no official category (for a pandemic)”.
• For the sake of clarification, WHO does not use the old system of 6 phases — that ranged from phase 1 (no reports of animal influenza causing human infections) to phase 6 (a pandemic) — that some people may be familiar with from H1N1 in 2009.

PRELIMS QUESTION:

Q. Consider the following statements.

1. An epidemic is the occurrence of cases of a disease in excess of expected occurrence in a community or region during a given time period

2. A pandemic is an infectious disease wherein significant and ongoing person-to-person spread occurs in multiple countries around the world at the same time

Which of the above given statements is/are correct?

a. 1 only

b. 2 only

c. Both 1 and 2

d. Neither 1 nor 2

Answer to Prelims question