It seems like the world was caught off guard by the first modern day pandemic to spread to every corner of the world. COVID-19 was identified as a Pandemic on March 11th (https://72inapart.com/its-a-pandemic/) by the World Health Organization (WHO).
This made me think what is a Pandemic? and What was COVID-19 prior to being classified as a Pandemic?
So, what is a Pandemic? A pandemic is used to describe a disease that has spread across many countries and affects a large number of people. The data scientist in me needs to quantify what “many countries” and “a large number of people” means. How many countries need to have a disease before it becomes a global emergency? 5, 10, 25, 50 … Is a large number of people 100, 1,000, 10,000 ? I couldn’t find the answers, the CDC nor the WHO specify how many countries or how many people need to be affected in order for something to be declared a pandemic.
When the WHO declared COVID-19 a Pandemic on March 11th, there were 126,000+ COVID-19 infections globally and 114 affected countries. So maybe the answers to what qualifies as a Pandemic are when a disease spreads to greater than 100 countries and greater than 120k people (infected).
According to the CDC, here are the stages diseases travel on their way to being labeled a Pandemic.
- Sporadic, Where a disease is happening infrequently and irregularly.
- Endemic, Due to the geographic location the disease is constantly present.
- Epidemic, Sudden increase in number of cases and is more than what’s expected for an area.
- And Pandemic, A disease that has gone Global = COVID-19.
I am not sure which classifications were applied to COVID-19 prior to becoming a Pandemic or whether were applied.
