- The World Health Organization has finally declared the novel coronavirus a ‘pandemic‘.
- Earlier, on January 30 the WHO declared it was a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.
- COVID-19 is a respiratory infection.
- COVID-19 is the official name given to the virus by the World Health Organization.
- Before WHO officially named the virus, it was also referred to as coronavirus, the novel coronavirus and 2019-nCOV (to indicate the year when the virus was first detected).
Outbreak, Epidemic and Pandemic
- An outbreak is understood to be a sudden rise in the cases of a disease in a particular place.
- An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in a certain population or region.
- Epidemic is a large outbreak of disease that attacks many peoples at about the same time and may spread through one or several communities
- A pandemic is “the worldwide spread of a new disease”.
- There is no specific number of countries that a disease must touch for WHO to classify it as a pandemic.