Difference Between Outbreaks, Epidemic and Pandemic

(Photo : Reuters)

There are three words that everyone heard since the birth of coronavirus that originated in China. These words are outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic. But, how do these words differ with one another?

Everyone needs to know the difference between these three words and when they are going to use. Sometimes, people got panicked because they heard that a disease becomes an outbreak, an epidemic, or a pandemic.

According to Rebecca Fischer, an epidemiologist, in her recently published article that these words should be clearly defined to avoid confusion. These words have been used in different news outlets and are circling the social-media yet sometimes they lead the viewers or readers to panic due to the inappropriate use of the word.

Here are the definitions of these three words and when they are to be used:

Outbreak

An outbreak is a term used if the occurrence of the disease happened in a small period and is unusual. In this case, the epidemiologist will determine how many cases of illness will normally occur in a defined period, place, and population. This means that the term outbreak is noticeable and the increase in several cases is predictable.

An example of this is diarrhea. If one or two students got sick because of diarrhea, then that's normal. However, if it spikes to 15 and all at once then that becomes an outbreak. 

Moreover, an outbreak is more noticeable if a new disease emerges. Just like what happened in Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated, there was an unusual spike of pneumonia cases.

As soon as the health officials knew it, they did an investigation. They used the information gathered on how to contain such disease.

Epidemic

The term epidemic is used if the disease or illness has reached a larger geographic area which is not expected. An example of this are places outside in Wuhan where there is a spike of number of pneumonia cases. This is one of the symptoms of COVID-19.

When pneumonia cases were confirmed to have reached outside Wuhan, the epidemiologist knew that a bigger outbreak was spreading. There is also a need to contain the disease.

However, there is no vaccine available yet for COVID-19 and the spiking number of COVID-19 patients outside Wuhan is unexpected. This means that the outbreak of COVID-19 from Wuhan across China now becomes an Epidemic.

Pandemic

The term pandemic is the highest level of a global health emergency. This means that the term is used if the disease has reached other regions like Asia, South and North America, and other places. Most of all, it is important to use that this term is also used if the disease is getting out of control.

In history, there were only two cases where the World Health Organization declared a disease as a pandemic. It was during influenza in 1918 and influenza H1N1 in 2009. However, before the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, for Fischer and other epidemiologists they already called COVID-19 as a pandemic. 

For them, it is too late for the WHO to declare COVID-19 as pandemic because since it has reached more than 120,000 cases and affected at least 114 countries around the world. Moreover, eight countries have more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19.

The declaration of the WHO for COVID-19 as a pandemic will tell the government and agencies around the world to mitigate the disease. This is expected to have political, societal, and economic impacts on a global scale. 

Read related article: Pandemic vs Epidemic