COVID-19: Terms and Phrases

As the coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been rapidly spreading throughout the world and forcing people to stay home, it has added new phrases like “flattening the curve” and “social distancing” to our everyday vocabulary.It’s important that we know the correct meanings behind these words, according to National Public Radio, and not the exaggerated meanings that seem to circulate around social media. 

Pandemic: A pandemic is the sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease, spanning throughout several countries or continents. The difference between a pandemic and an outbreak, which is what coronavirus was first defined as, is that an outbreak is amongst a small group of people.

Transmission: Transmission is how a disease is spread. There are different types of transmission, such as direct transmission and indirect transmission. For example, shaking hands is direct transmission and consuming food and water that has been contaminated by the disease is indirect transmission.

Flattening the Curve: To stop the quick spread of coronavirus, we must flatten the curve. To achieve this, there must be community isolation measures set in place in order to keep the daily number of coronavirus cases at a manageable level. When looking at a chart that displays cases of coronavirus, the height is the pandemic outbreak with no interference, and the goal is to decrease the height of that curve.

Droplet: A droplet is a mist produced when sneezing, coughing or talking and can spread disease when the person is affected. It spreads when droplets land on another person’s mouth, nose or eyes or when someone touches a surface with disease ridden droplets.

Isolation: Isolation is separating people with coronavirus from healthy people to prevent the spread of disease.

Quarantine: Quarantine is the restriction of movement of people who do not have symptoms of a disease but have been exposed to it. The purpose of this is to see if this individual has the disease without exposing them to others and possibly spreading the disease. 

Social Distancing: This is creating space between yourself and others in order to slow the spread of coronavirus or other infectious diseases. For example, with coronavirus, it is advised that you stay at least six feet away from others to slow the spread of the disease.

National State of Emergency: When a National State of Emergency is declared by a country, the government is encouraged to perform actions that it would not usually perform, like setting aside money to battle things like coronavirus, other pandemics, natural disasters and more.