Covid-19 is now considered a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). At a press conference held in Geneva this Wednesday, the Director General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, however, said that “describing the situation as a pandemic does not change the assessment of the threat posed by this coronavirus. It doesn’t change what WHO does, and it doesn’t change what countries should do. “
But in reality, what does this term pandemic correspond to?
On his website, WHO reports that a pandemic is characterizing the global spread of a new disease, combined with the lack of immunity to the disease in the vast majority of the population.
Recently, the director of the WHO emergency program, Michael Ryan, had given more indications, According to the latter, “the concept of a pandemic assumes that the entire world population is likely to be exposed to an infection and that a part of it may potentially fall ill“, he had advanced.
Etymologically, pandemic comes from Greek terms “pan“and”demos “ meaning “all” and “people”. The Larousse dictionary defines a pandemic by “an epidemic spread to the entire population of a continent, even to the whole world“.
This Wednesday, the director general of WHO also added that “pandemic is not a word to be used lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if used improperly, can cause unreasonable fear or unwarranted acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death”.
118,619 people have been infected and 4,292 others have been killed by COVID-19 around the world, according to the latest figures from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
– .
