ENDEMIC STAGE OF A PANDEMIC

ENDEMIC STAGE OF A PANDEMIC

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- California has announced a shift to an endemic approach to Covid-19 that will focus on watching out for new variants and reacting quickly to outbreaks rather than issuing mandates for masking indoors.

Concept-

Infectious disease:

• Infectious diseases are spread by either bacterial or viral agents and are ever-present in society. Usually infected cases are present in numbers below an expected threshold but every once in a while there may be an outbreak, a new strain or a new disease that has a significant impact at either a local or global level.
• The spread and rate of new cases can be classified as:
  • Endemic – describes a disease that is present permanently in a region or population
  • Epidemic – is an outbreak that affects many people at one time and can spread through one or several communities
  • Pandemic – is the term used to describe an epidemic when the spread is global.

What does endemic stage mean?

• Endemic is derived from Greek en meaning in and demos meaning people. It is used to describe a disease that is present at an approximately constant level within a society or country. Each country may have a disease that is unique:
  • For example, flu which goes up in the winters and when the season is changing because of lower immunity in people or dengue which goes up after monsoons because of the availability of vectors.
• An infection becomes endemic when the rates become static in a given geographical location, meaning that the pathogen causing the disease — SARS-CoV-2 in this case — is likely to remain in circulation without causing large outbreaks as witnessed over the last two years.
• Endemic means that the virus will continue circulating in the population and there will be periodic ups and downs when the conditions are favourable to the virus and less favourable to humans.