The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020 declared COVID-19 a global pandemic as the new coronavirus, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia to the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
What a Pandemic means?
“Pandemic” has nothing to do with how serious the illness is. It just means a disease is spreading widely. Pandemics are more likely if a virus is brand new, able to infect people easily and can spread from person to person in an efficient and sustained way.
There is no threshold, such as a certain number of deaths or infections, or number of countries affected, that needs to be met. For example, the Sars coronavirus, identified in 2003, was not declared a pandemic by the WHO despite affecting 26 countries. However its spread was contained quickly, and only a handful of nations were significantly affected, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Canada.
The WHO in 2009 had declared swine flu a pandemic which was a new flu strain. That decision came after the new H1N1 flu had been spreading in multiple countries for about six weeks.
The Pandemic label triggers governments to activate preparedness plans and possibly take emergency procedures to protect the public, such as more drastic travel and trade restrictions.
India enforces Epidemic Act of 1897
On March 11, it was decided in a Cabinet Secretary meeting that states and Union Territories should invoke provisions of Section 2 of Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, so that Health Ministry advisories are enforceable.
The act was enforced during British rule to tackle the epidemic of bubonic plague that had spread in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency in the 1890s.
The Act consists of four sections and it aims to provide “for the better prevention of the spread of Dangerous Epidemic Diseases.”
