What would change if the coronavirus outbreak is officially declared a pandemic?
Global cases of COVID-19, the new disease caused by coronavirus, climbed to more than 113,000 on Monday.
Is there a magic number before the outbreak is officially declared a pandemic?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a pandemic occurs when a new virus emerges that can easily infect people and “spread from person to person in an efficient and sustained way.”
The World Health Organization simplified it even more in 2010: “A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.” They go on to say it involves the global spread of a virus for which “most people do not have immunity.”
As of 2020, WHO “no longer uses the classification pandemic,” Reuters reported.
So who is authorized to declare coronavirus a pandemic?
WHO — an agency of the United Nations headquartered in Geneva — previously used six phases to describe an outbreak with the last being a “pandemic.”
The H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009 was the last time WHO classified a disease as a pandemic.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told Reuters last month there is no longer an “official category” for a pandemic, but that’s not to say officials couldn’t still use the term to describe an outbreak.
Have they done so?
WHO has stopped short of calling coronavirus a pandemic, referring to it instead as a “epidemic.”
During a briefing on Feb. 24, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the epidemic was a “public health emergency of international concern.”
“Our decision about whether to use the word ‘pandemic’ to describe an epidemic is based on an ongoing assessment of the geographical spread of the virus, the severity of disease it causes and the impact it has on the whole of society,” he said.
At the time, Ghebreyesus said the virus was contained and hadn’t caused “large-scale severe disease or death.”
“Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has,” he said. “Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.”pot
But the coronavirus continued its slow spread over the next two weeks.
“Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real,” Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing Monday. “But it would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled.”
What have others been calling it?
CNN is calling the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the media outlet said in an announcement Monday.
They concede that neither WHO nor the CDC have called it such, pointing instead to epidemiologists and public health experts who would argue otherwise.
At least two public health experts told the Associated Press the designation is overdue and a doctor specializing in infectious diseases called it an “incipient pandemic” in an article published by WBUR.
What changes if coronavirus is declared a pandemic?
Legally speaking, nothing. But words matter, National Geographic reported.
Citing Georgetown University professor Lawrence Gostin, the magazine reported the world panicked when officials declared the H1N1 influenza outbreak a pandemic. “Panic” is literally in the word “pandemic,” Gostin told National Geogrpahic.
WHO officials seem to agree.
“Using the word pandemic carelessly has no tangible benefit, but it does have significant risk in terms of amplifying unnecessary and unjustified fear and stigma, and paralyzing systems,” Ghebreyesus said during a briefing on Feb. 26.
Declaring the outbreak a public health emergency in February had a more tangible impact.
According to Science News, it enabled WHO to issue recommendations “to member countries in an effort to contain the virus and prevent it from becoming a pandemic.”
But should health officials declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, National Geographic reported, it would signal that the virus can no longer be contained, meaning officials would start working on “mitigation strategies, like closing schools and canceling mass gatherings.”
This doesn’t mean people should start hoarding supplies, The Guardian reported, citing Nigel McMillan, the director of infectious diseases and immunology at the Menzies Health Institute in Queensland.
Instead, it signals a shift in focus outside of mere travel restrictions.
“This includes preparing our hospitals for a large influx of patients, stockpiling any antivirals, and advising the public that when the time comes, they will need to think about things like staying at home if ill, social distancing, avoiding large gatherings, etc.,” McMillan said.
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 12:54 PM with the headline "What would change if the coronavirus outbreak is officially declared a pandemic?."
