(CNN) – The World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the new coronavirus outbreak is a pandemic.
There are 118,000 cases, more than 4,000 deaths, the agency said, and the virus has found a foothold on every continent except Antarctica.
“We have never seen a pandemic caused by a coronavirus before. And we’ve never seen a pandemic that can be controlled at the same time before, “WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
“Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change the WHO assessment of the threat posed by this coronavirus. It doesn’t change what WHO is doing, and it doesn’t change what countries should do. ”
If countries detect, examine, treat, isolate, track and mobilize their people to respond, those with a handful of new coronavirus cases can prevent those cases from becoming clusters, and those groups from becoming community-transmitted, Ghebreyesus said. .
“Several countries have shown that this virus can be suppressed and controlled,” said Ghebreyesus.
A pandemic is defined as the “global spread” of a new disease. Considering that an outbreak is the occurrence of disease cases that exceed what is normally expected, an epidemic is more than a normal number of disease cases, specific health-related behaviors, or other health-related events in a community or region. , according to the World Health Organization.
In January, the WHO declared the new coronavirus outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. CNN announced Monday that it is using the term pandemic to describe the current coronavirus outbreak.
The last reported pandemic in the world was the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, which killed hundreds of thousands worldwide.
“The WHO has been evaluating this outbreak the entire time and we are deeply concerned with both the alarming levels of spread and severity and the alarming levels of inaction,” said Ghebreyesus.
“We cannot say this clearer or louder, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”
Pandemics of the past
Pandemics have been part of human history for centuries, and one of the earliest in history dates back to 1580.
Since then, at least four influenza pandemics occurred in the 19th century and three in the 20th century, according to the CDC.
The most serious pandemic in recent history was the 1918 flu pandemic, sometimes called the “Spanish flu.” The pandemic is estimated to have infected about 500 million people or a third of the world population and killed some 50 million worldwide.
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There is still some debate about where this H1N1 flu virus originated, but scientists have discovered that the virus had genes of avian origin. In other words, he had a connection to birds.
According to the CDC, more US soldiers died from the 1918 flu pandemic than those who died in battle during World War I in 1918. In 1919, the pandemic decreased but the H1N1 virus continued to circulate seasonally for 38 years.
Then, in 1957, a new influenza A H2N2 virus emerged in East Asia, triggering a pandemic that is estimated to have killed 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States. The virus was made up of genes that could be related to an avian influenza A virus, suggesting that it had a connection to birds.
The virus was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in the summer of that year. However, its survival in the human population was short and the virus disappeared approximately a decade after its arrival. Some scientists suggest that it was supplanted by an H3N2 subtype.
In 1968, a pandemic caused by an H3N2 influenza virus that originated in China swept the world. That virus was made up of two genes from an avian influenza A virus, according to the CDC.
The virus was first observed in the United States in September 1968 and caused around 100,000 deaths nationwide and 1 million worldwide. Most of the excess deaths were in adults over 65, according to the CDC.
The H3N2 virus continues to circulate globally as a seasonal influenza virus.
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