The World Health Organization (WHO) has now declared COVID-19 a pandemic, after its earlier declaration of global health emergency in January. In the media briefing announcing the pandemic, WHO Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change WHO’s assessment of the threat posed by the virus, it doesn’t change what WHO is doing, and it doesn’t change what countries should do.”
The SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, has infected over 1,18,000 people around the globe and killed more than 4,000. The number of countries affected, as of now, stands at 114, which is expected to rise. Ghebreyesus said, “WHO is deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and the alarming levels of inactivity. In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of countries has tripled.”
WHO officials in the briefing said that it is still possible to contain the pandemic and called for countries to focus on control rather than on mitigation.
The Exponential Pattern of spread of Coronavirus
Coronavirus spread is not a matter to be taken lightly. Ignoring it could be devastating. The pattern that the spread of the virus has is exponential in character. This means that with an initial low rate of infection at initial time of the outbreak in a place will have sudden jump in the new cases. This increase then goes on and on for a prolonged period.
The graph below shows the coronavirus infection pattern outside China. This data pertains to South Korea, Iran and Italy.
This shows the exponential pattern of the spread of the virus. For a few days initially, the rate of detection of new cases remains stable or shows a very gradual increase, but after crossing a threshold, it soars and the rate of infection doubles almost every day.
The second graph below shows the similar pattern in Italy, Iran and South Korea.
Other countries are also witnessing an exponential spread pattern as can be seen below:
While India has identified 73 cases as of now, many fear that the threshold after which an exponential growth is expected is imminent. If this threshold is crossed, every day could witness almost double the cases of new infections compared to the previous day. India has declared cancellation of all visas—except those issued for diplomatic and official purposes, UN-international organizations, employment and projects—till April 14.
