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How do you determine when an epidemic becomes a pandemic?
Which atributes will be considered the most impotant to determine when an epidemic becomes a pandemic? For example, It can be based on number of patients get affected with the virus or the speed of spreading the disease from one location to other location.....
asked Jun 10, 2009 at 04:51PM in Infectious Diseases
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4Votes
answered Jun 11, 2009 at 11:27AMWHO has well defined criteria to define pandemic, when disease reaches phase 6 it is called pandemic
Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.
Ref. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html -
6VotesFrom a virology standpoint, an epidemic becomes a pandemic when there are global epidemics. WHO has its own definition, but there were pandemics long before WHO, and its definition is intended to help pandemic preparedness. Rather than defining a pandemic in terms of the numbers of countries that experience epidemics, it is scientifically useful to consider the point at which epidemics are occurring in multiple countries.
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