The World Health Organisation has declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.
Making the announcement on Wednesday, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 'pandemic is not a word
The World Health Organisation has declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.
Making the announcement on Wednesday, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 'pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly'.
Coronavirus, or Covid-19 as it is officially known, has infected more than 118,000 people in 114 countries, and led to 4,291 deaths.
According to the WHO, a pandemic is declared when when a new influenza virus emerges and spreads around the world, and most people do not have immunity.
Influenza pandemics are not hugely common with around three occurring every century for the last 300 years.
Viruses that have caused past pandemics typically originated from animal influenza viruses.
When was the last flu pandemic?
The most recent flu pandemic the world has seen was the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
It lasted from early 2009 to late 2010 and is believed to have infected around 700 million to 1.4 billion people - around 11 to 21 per cent of the world's population.
The number of fatalities from the illness, which originated in Mexico, is believed to be between 150,000 and 575,000, meaning the virus had a relatively low mortality rate.
Unlike most other strains of the flu, swine flu - or H1N1 as it was named - did not appear to disproportionately affect the elderly population.
Most complications seemed to occur in previously healthy patients - but obesity and respiratory diseases were seen as the strongest risk factors.
Vaccines, in the form of an injection and a nasal spray, were introduced in November 2009 when around three billion doses were administered across more than 13 countries.
As the virus originated from a strain of flu found in pigs, some governments across the world imposed harsh sanctions on the meat industry.
Egypt called for the extermination of all 300,000 pigs believed to be in the country in April 2009, while Baghdad Zoo culled its three wild boars.
However, the WHO said there was no reason to believe that the pigs were transmitting the virus to humans.
When were other flu pandemics?
The most deadly flu pandemic to have been recorded in recent history was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
Like the swine flu outbreak of 2009, the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 involved the H1N1 flu virus.
It infected 500 million people around the world, which was believed to be around 27 per cent of the world's population at that time.
The death toll is estimated to have been 40 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million making it one of the most deadly ever.
The unusually severe disease killed up to 20 per cent of those infected, as opposed to the usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1 per cent.
The Black Death, or Great Plague, in the mid 14th century, is thought to have killed around 75 million people - which was a much higher percentage of the world's then smaller population.
What other pandemics have there been?
HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic that is still ongoing.
The infection originated in Africa, and spread to the United States via Haiti between 1966 and 1972.
As of 2018, approximately 37.9 million people are infected with HIV globally - and approximately 58 per cent are men.
It has been estimated that the global spread of the infection peaked in 1997 at 3.3 million per year.
Infections fell rapidly from 1997 to 2005, to about 2.6 million per year, but remained stable from 2005 to 2015.
By 2009, AIDS had caused nearly 30 million deaths. It's thought the death toll could reach 90 million by 2025.
In the last 200 years, seven cholera pandemics have been recorded with the most recent originating in Indonesia in 1961.
The Western African Ebola virus epidemic from 2013 to 2016, and the Zika virus epidemic from 2015 to 2016, were not declared pandemics by the WHO.
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