Pandemics Article PDF

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created the worst crisis in Asia and the Pacific since World War II. Across the Asia-Pacific region, as across the world, countries have suffered sudden economic contractions, interruptions to trade, broken supply chains, and the collapse o...

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created the worst crisis in Asia and the Pacific since World War II. Across the Asia-Pacific region, as across the world, countries have suffered sudden economic contractions, interruptions to trade, broken supply chains, and the collapse of international tourism -- leading to widespread job losses and increases in poverty. In all countries, the economic shock caused by the pandemic has exposed many structural weaknesses and fault lines -- notably in health and social protection systems, digital connectivity and skills, and the extent to which our production and consumption patterns have been destroying the environment.  Even if COVID-19 seems to have subsided, the crisis is not over. Perhaps this is a moment of change, a time to reimagine the future for our society, health and climate? How do we prevent another pandemic? It is necessary to understand pandemics to get some ideas to answer the questions.    **1. What is pandemic?** \"Epidemic\" and \"pandemic\" are two words that describe the spread of disease. An epidemic is an unexpected increase in disease cases in a specific geographical area. Yellow fever, smallpox, measles, and polio are prime examples of epidemics. An epidemic disease doesn\'t necessarily have to be contagious. West Nile fever and the rapid increase in obesity rates are also considered epidemics. Epidemics can refer to a disease or other specific health-related behaviour (e.g., smoking) with rates that are clearly above the expected occurrence in a community or region. The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a pandemic when a disease\'s growth is exponential. This means the growth rate skyrockets and cases grow more each day than before. In being declared a pandemic, the virus has nothing to do with virology, population immunity, or disease severity. It means a virus covers a wide area, affecting several countries and populations. The WHO defines pandemics, epidemics, and endemic diseases based on a disease\'s rate of spread. Thus, the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic isn\'t in the severity of the disease but in the degree to which it has spread. A pandemic cuts across international boundaries, as opposed to regional epidemics. This broad geographical reach is what makes pandemics lead to large-scale social disruption, economic loss, and general hardship. It\'s important to note that a once-declared epidemic can progress into pandemic status. While an epidemic is large, it is also generally contained or expected in its spread, while a pandemic is international and out of control. The World Health Organization (WHO) has organized a pandemic preparedness plan that consists of six phases of pandemic alert, outlined as follows:   Ÿ **Phase 1**: the lowest pandemic alert level indicates that an influenza virus, either newly emerged or previously existing, is circulating among animals. The risk of transmission to humans is lacking. Ÿ **Phase 2**: isolated incidences of animal-to-human virus transmission are observed, indicating that the virus has pandemic potential. Ÿ **Phase 3**: characterized by small disease outbreaks, generally resulting from multiple cases of animal-to-human transmission, though limited capacity for human-to-human transmission may exist. Ÿ **Phase 4**: confirmed human-to-human viral transmission that causes sustained disease in human communities. At this stage, containment of the virus is impossible, but a pandemic is not necessarily inevitable. Implementing control methods to prevent further viral spread is emphasized in affected parts of the world. Ÿ **Phase 5**: marked by human-to-human disease transmission in two countries, indicating that a pandemic is imminent and that distribution of stockpiled drugs and execution of strategies to control the disease must be carried out with a sense of urgency. Ÿ **Phase 6**: characterized by widespread and sustained disease transmission among humans. ** ** **2. What causes a pandemic?** Infectious diseases such as influenza can spread rapidly---sometimes in a matter of days---among humans living in different areas of the world. The spread of a disease is facilitated by several factors, including an increased degree of infectiousness of the disease-causing agent, human-to-human transmission of the disease, and modern means of transportation, such as air travel. Most highly infectious illnesses that occur in humans are caused by diseases that first arise in animals. Thus, when a new infectious agent or disease emerges in animals, surveillance organizations located within affected areas are responsible for alerting the WHO and for closely monitoring the contagious agent\'s behaviour and the disease\'s activity and spreading disease activity on a global scale through a network of surveillance centres located in countries worldwide. ** ** **3. Pandemics in history** Throughout history, pandemics of diseases such as Cholera, Plague, and influenza have significantly shaped civilizations. Here are some notable pandemics in history as follows:    Ÿ **ANTONINE PLAGUE (165 AD): **It is also known as the Plague of Galen; the Antonine Plague was an ancient pandemic that affected Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy and is thought to have been either Smallpox or Measles, though the actual cause is still unknown. This unknown disease was brought back to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia around 165AD; unknowingly, they had spread a disease which would end up killing over 5 million people and decimating the Roman army.    Ÿ **PLAGUE OF JUSTINIAN (541-542):** The pandemic killed perhaps half the population of Europe. The Plague of Justinian was an outbreak of the bubonic Plague that afflicted the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities, killing up to 25 million people in its year-long reign of terror. Generally regarded as the first recorded incident of the Bubonic Plague, the Plague of Justinian left its mark on the world, killing up to a quarter of the population of the Eastern Mediterranean and devastating the city of Constantinople, where at its height, it was killing an estimated 5,000 people per day and eventually resulting in the deaths of 40% of the city\'s population.   Ÿ **THE BLACK DEATH (1346-1353): **From 1346 to 1353, an outbreak of the Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with an estimated death toll between 75 and 200 million people. Thought to have originated in Asia, the Plague most likely jumped continents via the fleas living on the rats that frequently lived aboard merchant ships. Ports, major centres at the time, were the perfect breeding ground for the rats and fleas, and thus, the insidious bacterium flourished, devastating three continents in its wake.   Ÿ **THIRD CHOLERA PANDEMIC (1852--1860): **Generally considered the most deadly of the seven cholera pandemics, the third major outbreak of Cholera in the 19th century lasted from 1852 to 1860. Like the first and second pandemics, the Third Cholera Pandemic originated in India, spreading from the Ganges River Delta before tearing through Asia, Europe, North America and Africa and ending the lives of over a million people. British physician John Snow, while working in a poor area of London, tracked cases of Cholera and eventually succeeded in identifying contaminated water as the means of transmission for the disease. Unfortunately, the same year as his discovery (1854) went down as the worst year of the pandemic, in which 23,000 people died in Great Britain.   Ÿ **FLU PANDEMIC (1889-1890): **Originally the \"Asiatic Flu\" or \"Russian Flu\" as it was called, this strain was thought to be an outbreak of the Influenza A virus subtype H2N2, though recent discoveries have instead found the cause to be the Influenza A virus subtype H3N8. The first cases were observed in May 1889 in three separate and distant locations: Bukhara in Central Asia (Turkestan), Athabasca in northwestern Canada, and Greenland. Rapid population growth of the 19th century, specifically in urban areas, only helped the flu spread, and before long, the outbreak had spread across the globe. Though it was the first true epidemic in the era of bacteriology, it was learned from it. In the end, the 1889-1890 Flu Pandemic claimed the lives of over a million individuals.   Ÿ **SIXTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC (1910-1911): **Like its five previous incarnations, the Sixth Cholera Pandemic originated in India, killing over 800,000, before spreading to the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. The Sixth Cholera Pandemic was also the source of the last American outbreak of Cholera (1910--1911). American health authorities, having learned from the past, quickly sought to isolate the infected, and in the end, only 11 deaths occurred in the U.S. By 1923, Cholera cases had been cut down dramatically, although it was still a constant in India.   Ÿ **FLU PANDEMIC (1918): **Between 1918 and 1920, a disturbingly deadly outbreak of influenza tore across the globe, infecting over a third of the world\'s population and ending the lives of 20 -- 50 million people. Of the 500 million people infected in the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate was estimated at 10% to 20%, with up to 25 million deaths in the first 25 weeks alone. What separated the 1918 flu pandemic from other influenza outbreaks was the victims; where influenza had always previously only killed juveniles and the elderly or already weakened patients, it had begun striking down hardy and completely healthy young adults while leaving children and those with weaker immune systems still alive. Ÿ **ASIAN FLU (1956-1958): **Asian Flu was a pandemic outbreak of Influenza A of the H2N2 subtype that originated in China in 1956 and lasted until 1958. In its two-year spree, Asian Flu travelled from the Chinese province of Guizhou to Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States. Estimates for the death toll of the Asian Flu vary depending on the source, but the World Health Organization places the final tally at approximately 2 million deaths, 69,800 of those in the U.S. alone.   Ÿ **FLU PANDEMIC (1968): **A category 2 Flu pandemic sometimes referred to as \"the Hong Kong Flu,\" the 1968 flu pandemic was caused by the H3N2 strain of the Influenza A virus, a genetic offshoot of the H2N2 subtype. From the first reported case on July 13, 1968, in Hong Kong, it took only 17 days before outbreaks of the virus were reported in Singapore and Vietnam, and within three months, it spread to The Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the United States. While the 1968 pandemic had a comparatively low mortality rate (.5%), it still resulted in the deaths of more than a million people, including 500,000 residents of Hong Kong, approximately 15% of its population at the time.   Ÿ **HIV/AIDS PANDEMIC (AT ITS PEAK, 2005-2012):** First identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, HIV/AIDS has indeed proven itself as a global pandemic, killing more than 36 million people since 1981. Currently, there are between 31 and 35 million people living with HIV; the vast majority of those are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 5% of the population is infected, roughly 21 million people. As awareness has grown, new treatments have been developed that make HIV far more manageable, and many of those infected go on to lead productive lives. Between 2005 and 2012, the annual global deaths from HIV/AIDS dropped from 2.2 million to 1.6 million.   Ÿ **COVID-19 (THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS): **Beginning in December 2019, in the region of Wuhan, China, a new (\"novel\") coronavirus began appearing in human beings. It has been named Covid-19, a shortened form of \"coronavirus disease of 2019.\" This new virus spreads incredibly quickly between people due to its newness -- no one on earth has immunity to COVID-19 because no one had COVID-19 until 2019. While it was initially seen as an epidemic in China, the virus spread worldwide within months. The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic in 2023, and by the end of that year, the world saw about 700 million infected and nearly 7 million deaths.