The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared COVID-19 a "pandemic," the highest alert level of infectious disease. Pandemic is a terminology combined with "pan" meaning "all," and "demic" indicating "people" in Greek, and it refers to a state of infectious diseases spread worldwide.
COVID-19 is the second to be declared a pandemic after swine flu. What these two viruses have in common is that they affect lung cells. Both enter into lung tissues and oversecrete cytokines, stimulating immune systems. As a result, white blood cells move to the lungs and destroy lung cells, causing pulmonary inflammation and pulmonary edema.
However, there is a decisive difference. It is the presence or absence of treatment. Although there was a mutation in the process of interspecies transmission, a treatment called "Tamiflu" was produced for swine flu within five months of its spread. This was because swine flu is a type of flu and that there were existing flu therapeutics and manufacturing infrastructure.
But COVID-19 is different. COVID-19 is a newly discovered virus that has no platform, so modifying the existing treatments for Ebola, AIDS, malaria and avian influenza as a makeshift is the current situation.
"Infectious diseases are generally known to have no propagation power during incubation periods, but in the case of COVID-19, "asymptomatic infections," where it propagates even when there are no symptoms," Kim Woo-Joo, a professor at the Department of Infectious Disease at Korea University Guro Hospital explained.
On the other hand, a pandemic does not end until the maximum incubation period of 14 days doubles with no additional patients tested positive.
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