Erlyn Jasmine M.

Marcelo
11-Sun

COVID-19: A Pandemic Disease

By Erlyn Jasmine M. Marcelo

Today, a disease outbreak has made people alarmed at their surroundings and made
them hoard the things that would be relevant to keep them safe from the virus such as
alcohol, tissue, and facemask. Coronavirus Disease, also known as COVID-19, was first
detected in Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019 and which has now been detected in
more than 100 locations internationally with over 120,000 cases. The virus has been
named “SARS-CoV-2” and the disease it causes has been named “coronavirus disease
2019” and on March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declares coronavirus
‘pandemic’.

Pandemic is a worldwide spread of a disease or an infection. It came from the Greek

word 'pandemos'. Demos means the population, Pan meaning everyone. So 'pandemos'
is a concept where there's a belief that the whole world's population will likely be
exposed to this infection and potentially a proportion of them fall sick. While epidemic
only affects fewer number of people and is confined to a certain region.

Years ago, a number of pandemics has been seen worldwide namely plague, influenza,
HIV, Black Death, and others. However, the latest pandemic is the first among
coronavirus dealing with over 4,000 deaths worldwide. This current issue has made not
just the Filipinos but all the people alarmed of their current state. Although panic buying
shouldn’t be done, lots of citizen do that leaving other people nothing to buy. Fake news
are also circulating in the social media creating misconceptions among the netizens.
Students are being suspended from school but laborers would still continue to work
despite the issue hence more chance for them to be infected.

Things, nowadays, become worse than before. Philippines is a developing country with
a weak health care services and having this kind of situation would greatly affect the
marginalized people especially now that the Department of Health (DOH) isn’t ready for
this disease infecting their people. The testing kits that were developed by the scientists
in the University of the Philippines’ National Institutes for Health (UP NIH) were
Erlyn Jasmine M. Marcelo
11-Sun

approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but 2,000 testing kits were made
with the Philippines’ population of 104 million.

This pandemic has made huge impact to the people’s health. Even with country’s
safety precautions to prevent the spreading of the virus, it is still hard for the
government to completely stop it from spreading since the virus could spread fast and
easily. People are in fear of having the disease which in result making them act in such
different ways for safety precautions. In the end, it is still up to people on how they
would act with regards to this.

References:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/coronavirus-is-now-
pandemic-read-whats-pandemic-and-how-it-affects-you/articleshow/74582657.cms?
utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/03/11/1999932/use-developed-covid-test-kits-
okd