Question

What is a Disease outbreak?

2. What is the most recent disease outbreak?

(Clue: Pandenia)

Answer 1

1) Disease outbreak is when a disease occurs suddenly in large numbers in the population than what is normally expected during a particular period. Disease outbreaks can happen in one community or even spread across countries and continents. If it occurs in a particular geographical area, it is an epidemic. However, when it spreads across countries and continents, it is known as a pandemic. Disease outbreaks require the pathogen to be present in large numbers, having a person to person mode of transmission (droplet or airborne infection) or a common source from where it can spread (e.g. food borne infections). It also depends on whether the population is susceptible to the pathogen or not.

2. The most recent disease outbreak is the SARS-CoV 2 pandemic (assuming it is pandemia and not pandenia). This pandemic outbreak is commonly called COVID 19. The SARS-CoV 2 affects the lungs, inducing severe acute respiratory syndrome. The virus, belong to coronavirus family, infects the nasopharyngeal cells of the respiratory tract via its binding of its spike S protein to the ACE2 receptor. It will then infect the lungs, inducing inflammation and pneumonia. Hence, infected individuals require oxygen and ventilator support. It was declared as a pandemic as the disease has spread through multiple countries all over the world. Around 216 countries are affected by this virus. The virus has spreads from bats to humans and can spread through infected droplets of infected person. It is highly contagious causing death in nearly 3.5% cases. There are more than 4500000 confirmed cases of COVD19 till date. Of these, more than 300000 people have died due to pneumonia. The infectivity of this virus is increased by the fact that most infected individuals are asymptomatic. Hence, they spread the virus without realizing that they harbor the virus in their body. Viral load may be quite high in the asymptomatic carriers.