COVID-19 Education
Tags: covid19
Published: 2020-03-23 03:28:04

Are there any COVID-19 Health Care Workers here? I am a little concern that my country didn't give that much education on the pandemic.

My foremost concern, other than the PPE, is about **WHO Alert Level**. Anyone can find a reference?

The levels are presumably,

The System:
Alert level 1:

- "In this phase we prepare - the basics like border measures, contact tracing and cancelling mass gatherings are all activated. You'll see that this is where we have been when COVID first arrived in New Zealand.

Alert level 2:

- "Where the disease is contained, but the risks are growing because we have more cases. This is when we move to reduce our contact with one another, we increase our border measures and we cancel events. This is also the level where we ask people to work differently if they can, and cancel unnecessary travel."

Alert level 3:

- "Alert level three is where the disease is increasingly difficult to contain. This is where we restrict our contact by stepping things up again. We close public venues and ask non-essential businesses to close."

Alert level 4:

- "This is where we have sustained transmission. This is where we eliminate contact with each other altogether. We keep essential services going, but we ask everyone to stay at home until COVID-19 is back under control."

And there are Influenza pandemic phases, which I can find the reference.

## Definition of the phases

- **Phase 1** no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in humans.
- **Phase 2**, an animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans, and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.
- **Phase 3**, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks. Limited human-to-human transmission may occur under some circumstances, for example, when there is close contact between an infected person and an unprotected caregiver. However, limited transmission under such restricted circumstances does not indicate that the virus has gained the level of transmissibility among humans necessary to cause a pandemic.
- **Phase 4** is characterized by verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks”. The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk of a pandemic. Any country that suspects or has verified such an event should urgently consult with WHO so that the situation can be jointly assessed and a decision made by the affected country if implementation of a rapid pandemic containment operation is warranted. Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.
- **Phase 5** is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region (Figure 4)23. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
- **Phase 6**, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.
- During the **post-peak** period, pandemic disease levels in most countries with adequate surveillance will have dropped below peak observed levels. The post-peak period signifies that pandemic activity appears to be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will occur and countries will need to be prepared for a second wave.
- Previous pandemics have been characterized by waves of activity spread over months. Once the level of disease activity drops, a critical communications task will be to balance this information with the possibility of another wave. Pandemic waves can be separated by months and an immediate “at-ease” signal may be premature.
- In the **post-pandemic period**, influenza disease activity will have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza. It is expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal influenza A virus. At this stage, it is important to maintain surveillance and update pandemic preparedness and response plans accordingly. An intensive phase of recovery and evaluation may be required.

![Continuum of pandemic phases](https://res.cloudinary.com/patarapolw/image/upload/v1584930645/blogdown/20200323-0930.png)

The pandemic of influenza is not new, but last pandemic was many decades ago...

## History of influenza pandemic

![past four influenza pandemics](https://res.cloudinary.com/patarapolw/image/upload/v1584930742/blogdown/20200323-0932.png)

I was too young in 2009 to know what happened, but it seems to have stirred some news...