THE VERGE – 03/11/2020: Coronavirus has been around for some time now, but it has gotten more serious. As of today, you can call it a pandemic. The World Health Organization made the announcement, and now we have a worldwide outbreak of the highest ratio. COVID-19 is now present in 114 countries, and more than 118,000 cases have been recorded so far.
The decision was made public by Tedros Adhanom, who is the general director of WHO. Adhanom stated: “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action.”
While the concern grows, many cases in China and South Korea show that the disease can be managed. Tedros Adhanom called for all countries to try and work of stopping the spread of this virus: “If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace, and mobilize their people in the response, those with a handful of #COVID19 cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters, and those clusters becoming community transmission.”
The World Health Organization defines a pandemic as a worldwide spread of a new disease. This is precisely what happened with COVID-19. The last time the World Health Organization declared a pandemic was in 2009. If you recall, at that time, the issue in question was H1N1. Back in 2009, almost a quarter of the world’s population was infected with the new virus.
"81 countries have not reported any #COVID19 cases, and 57 countries have reported 10 cases or less.
We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic"-@DrTedros #coronavirus
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 11, 2024
Even when the situation got critical in 2009 with H1N1 and pandemic was declared, some criticized the decision and pointed out the unnecessary spread of panic. After that, we had outbreaks of SARS and MERS, but neither was declared a pandemic.
Source: theverge.com
Nina Smith 