What are the currently active pandemics?

Three years later, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the global emergency of the covid-19 pandemic to be over. But are there other active outbreaks?

Outbreaks, epidemics, endemics and pandemics are public health situations that keep health officials awake at night. Over time, several factors have influenced the increase in incidence rates and contributed to the rapid spread of pathogens around the world.

Find out if there are still active outbreaks and what to expect in the future, how to distinguish the terms.

Are they synonyms?

With the Covid pandemic, some words came to the fore. Outbreaks, epidemics, endemics, and pandemics consistently make the headlines.

But are these words synonymous? Answer is no. Each of these terms refers to a specific event. See the differences:

• Epidemic: Outbreaks are characterized by an increase. cases in a particular area. For example, the rapid increase in viral infections in a school can be considered an epidemic. It also applies to a particular city, which is always something localized.
• epidemics: Outbreaks cover larger areas, with cities and states affected by the rapid increase in the number of cases that could reach the entire territory of the country. However, there is no global spread in epidemics.
• Pandemics: Here’s what we’ve been through in the last 3 years. Pandemics are the global spread of infectious diseases. The same disease is circulating all over the world, causing a very significant increase in potentially fatal cases.
• endemics: Endemics are diseases that are common in a particular region or country, and people live with these cases. The main endemic diseases in Brazil are: dengue fever, yellow fever and chagas disease.

Which pandemics are currently active?

In a quick search through WHO bulletins, Considering the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is currently no active pandemic..

However, there are several ongoing epidemics, as well as cases of parasitic diseases, such as monkeypox, some types of cancer, and sexually transmitted infections.

all these situations stay under the scrutiny of health systemsso any change of scenery and aggravation of the frames, the situation changes.

Forest fire

Several factors have contributed to the rapid spread of new viruses and potential pandemics. Movements such as globalization, deforestation, climate change, among others, benefited from new events.

If in 1918 the Spanish flu took years to reach new countries, now the world can be infected in a week. Faster, more accessible journeys, imports and exports of products can carry the risk of transmission of diseases and their vectors.

This can be seen, for example, from the increase in dengue fever cases in Europe. Before the mosquito Aedes Aegypti, disease vector, non-breeding and cold surviving, climate change and the rise in global temperature have led to unprecedented or very rare events.

Pandemic World

Unfortunately, other pandemics will come, but we are learning to predict and prevent injuries. Monitoring of cases, new viruses and pathogens is essential to prepare for new diseases that pose a potential death risk for the population.

Technologies have been developed to improve screening and prepare rapid responses to stop new cases.

Also read: AI could be effective protection against the next global pandemic

development of vaccines, Improved techniques and fast, resourceful response times are the gold standard for saving lives.. But anyone who thinks that only new viruses can cause new waves of pandemics, often from zoonotic jumps, is wrong.

Well Known Viruses Like polio and measles, it can still cause damage as vaccine compliance is low. Prevention must be done by everyone in the world community, through vaccinations or comprehensive oversight of public and public health agencies.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned how important follow-up and rapid response is to protect lives.

Despite all efforts, it took us 3 years to recover from a slower-responding epidemic in some countries with forms of vaccination or prevention.

Let’s hope time doesn’t erase what the history of Covid-19 has taught us about how to deal with or how to deal with a pandemic.