हिंदी
In March, World Health Organization announced that Coronavirus is a pandemic. However, these are some science terms and plenty of people are unable to differentiate between pandemic, epidemic, and an outbreak. This could be quite confusing. So here we are attempting to understand the difference. The major difference between all three is the spread scale of a certain disease. Here is how you can understand it better and in detail:
1.Outbreak: We declare a disease as an outbreak when it spreads at a small scale. Say, a small neighbourhood or a district. The number of cases are very less and the area is small too. If some people get stomach flu in a particular area, it can be called as an outbreak. The local health communities, then, take immediate measures to curb the problem and contain the spread of the disease.
2.Epidemic: During an epidemic, the area of spread of a particular disease is bigger than the area of an outbreak. If a whole city has been contaminated with the same disease, the government would declare it an epidemic. For example, when Coronavirus first started spreading in Wuhan, China, it was seen that it was turning into an epidemic from an outbreak. It is slightly more difficult to contain the epidemic than an outbreak as the area is vast.
3.Pandemic: Is a global health emergency. It means that the disease is out of control and it is spreading to different countries. It is very difficult to get control of it and there is a high risk that multiple people would get infected. The rate at which Coronavirus is spreading now can be declared as a pandemic where in every country has several cases of the disease.
