A pandemic is a global outbreak of infectious disease that significantly increases morbidity and mortality over a broad geographic area and causes significant economic, social and political disruption. The concept of pandemic includes more than just the speed of spread; it also includes whether the infection can be transmitted to all susceptible individuals in a period of time, and whether transmission is possible without specific climatic conditions or the presence of particular vectors (e.g., diseases carried by mosquitoes or ticks).
It takes a lot of people to create and sustain a pandemic, which is why it’s so difficult to contain or eradicate a pathogen once it gets a foothold. For example, SARS-CoV-2 was not the most contagious or deadly pathogen of its kind, but it managed to infect tens of millions and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths because of high transmissibility through air travel and relatively asymptomatic spread. Moreover, it affected a very large proportion of the world’s population because it traveled directly to many of them from Asia.
The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrates the need to strengthen critical pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) capacities at the local, regional and global levels, especially in low-income countries. The FNIH’s Pandemic Fund has already begun filling these funding gaps by supporting 47 projects in 75 countries, with a focus on low- and middle-income communities. UC research is helping to make this work even more effective by focusing on innovations that could benefit vulnerable groups and promote greater equity in the face of future pandemics.