How Data Can Manage Global Health Pandemics

Analyzing and Understanding COVID-19

Rupa Mahanti

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000574432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Industria farmacéutica, biotecnológica y sanitaria

"This book bridges the fields of health care and data to clarify how to use data to manage pandemics. Written while COVID-19 was raging, it identifies both effective practices and misfires, and is grounded in clear, research-based explanations of pandemics and data strategy….The author has written an essential book for students and professionals in both health care and data. While serving the needs of academics and experts, the book is accessible for the general reader."

– Eileen Forrester, CEO of Forrester Leadership Group, Author of CMMI for Services, Guidelines for Superior Service

"…Rupa Mahanti explores the connections between data and the human response to the spread of disease in her new book,... She recognizes the value of data and the kind of insight it can bring, while at the same time recognizing that using data to solve problems requires not just technology, but also leadership and courage. This is a book for people who want to better understand the role of data and people in solving human problems."

-- Laura Sebastian-Coleman, Author of Meeting the Challenges of Data Quality Management

In contrast to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which occurred in a non-digital age, the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic intersects with the digital age, characterized by the collection of large amounts of data and sophisticated technologies. Data and technology are being used to combat this digital age pandemic in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital age.

Given the adverse impacts of pandemics in general and the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, it is imperative that people understand the meaning, origin of pandemics, related terms, trajectory of a new disease, butterfly effect of contagious diseases, factors governing the pandemic potential of a disease, strategies to combat a pandemic, role of data, data sharing, data strategy, data governance, analytics, and data visualization in managing pandemics, pandemic myths, critical success factors in managing pandemics, and lessons learned. How Data Can Manage Global Health Pandemics: Analyzing and Understanding COVID-19 discusses these elements with special reference to COVID-19.

Dr. Rupa Mahanti is a business and data consultant and has expertise in different data management disciplines, business process improvement, regulatory reporting, quality management, and more. She is the author of Data Quality (ASQ Quality Press) and the series Data Governance: The Way Forward (Springer).

Chapter 1 Pandemic—An Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003270911-1

“It’s been said that there are decades where nothing happens; and then there are weeks when decades happen.”

—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Introduction

I am writing this book as the world continues to be overwhelmed by coronavirus—the COVID-19 pandemic, a respiratory disease which supposedly originated in the city of Wuhan in China in the end of 2019 (Zhu et al., 2020). In a few months, since its emergence, COVID-19 took the shape of a pandemic, and it has spread to every continent. The disease continues to spread like wild fire, and its longevity and cure remain unknown and uncertain. While from a prevention perspective, a number of vaccines have been manufactured and tested; a certain percentage of the people who have been administered vaccines since early 2021 have still contracted the disease. COVID-19 is the greatest challenge that countries have faced since World War II.

Pandemics have been a part of human history from ancient times through today. However, not all have the misfortune to experience a pandemic in their lifetime. While those who hear about a pandemic but are not directly impacted by it, might not remember the scale and impact, pandemics are generally characterized by fear, uncertainty, suddenness, panic, different degrees of stigma, and deaths, and have a devastating impact. Responding to a pandemic requires rigorous public health measures. The stricter the measures, the greater is the disruption of normal life, and more adverse is the economic impact. In addition, pandemics also have an impact on demography, social customs, culture, and religion.

In contrast to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which occurred in a non-digital age, the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic intersects with the digital age or information age which is characterized by the collection and availability of large amounts of data and sophisticated technologies that enable digital transformation, and an economy based on information technology. Data and technology are being used to combat this digital age pandemic in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital/non-digital age, when limited data were collected and digital technology was absent.

In this chapter, we discuss what a pandemic is, the characteristics of a pandemic, the origin of pandemics, and notable pandemics in the history of mankind, and briefly discuss the role of technology, data, and data analytics in managing pandemics.

What Is a Pandemic?

The term pandemic originated in the mid-17th century from the Greek roots, from pan “all” + dēmos “people” or pandēmos, that is, all the people [Lexico]. The first known use of the word pandemic, in 1666, referred to “a Pandemick, or Endemick, or rather a Vernacular Disease (a disease always reigning in a Country)” (Harvey, 1666).

It can be used as an adjective (in terms of the high magnitude of spread) as well as a noun (in connection with the disease).

Pandemic—Definitions

There is no universally accepted and standard definition of the term. For example, there have been arguments along the lines that level of explosive transmissibility is sufficient to declare a pandemic versus insistence by some that the severity of infection should also be considered when assigning pandemic status to a disease (Cohen, 2009; Enserink, 2009; Swine flu, 2009; Altman, 2009; Morens et al., 2009a).

In some ways, declaring a pandemic is more art than science. “Pandemics mean different things to different people,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in February 2020. “It really is borderline semantics, to be honest with you” (Ducharme, 2020).

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the term as follows:

Pandemic (adjective)—definition:

—occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population [Merriam-Webster Dictionary].

Pandemic (noun)—definition:

—an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population [Merriam-Webster Dictionary].

Collins Dictionary defines the term pandemic as follows:

A pandemic is an occurrence of a disease that affects many people over a very wide area [Collins Dictionary].

World Health Organization (WHO) defines pandemic as (WHO, 2010):

“the worldwide spread of a new disease.”

Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY (Shannon, 2020):

A pandemic is a global outbreak of a serious new illness that requires “sustained transmission throughout the world.”

Dana Grennan, MD, in her article “What is a Pandemic?” defines pandemic as (Grennan, 2019): “a health condition that has spread globally.”

Madhav et al. (2017) define pandemic as: “large-scale outbreaks of infectious disease that can greatly increase morbidity and mortality over a wide geographic area and cause significant economic, social, and political disruption (Jamison et al., 2017).”

All the aforementioned definitions have one characteristic in common—the large-scale spread of the disease.

Characteristics of Pandemics

While there is no single accepted definition of the term “pandemic,” characteristics of pandemics have been derived by studying diseases commonly said to be pandemic and identifying key features that apply to all or almost all of them (Morens et al., 2009a). These are as follows and summarized in Figure 1.1.

Large Geographic Spread

Almost all definitions of the term “pandemic” refer to diseases that have a large geographic spread. Some examples of diseases that evolved into a pandemic and had a large geographic spread are the 14th-century plague (the Black Death), cholera, influenza, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS. In a review of the history of pandemic influenza, pandemics were categorized as transregional (greater than or equal to two adjacent geographic regions of the world), interregional (greater than or equal to two nonadjacent geographic regions), and global (Taubenberger and Morens, 2009; Morens et al., 2009a).

Figure 1.1Characteristics of a pandemic.

Source: Adapted from Morens et al. (2009a)

Person-to-Person Spread

In addition to extensive geographic spread, most uses of the term pandemic imply spread of the disease from person to person via transmission that can be traced from one place to another place, as has been done historically for centuries (for example, the Black Death) (Morens et al., 2009a).

High Transmission Rates and Explosiveness

Diseases with slow rates of transmission or low rates of symptomatic (that is symptoms are manifest) are rarely classified as pandemics, even when they spread widely across multiple geographic regions. For example, West Nile virus infection spread from the Middle East to both Russia and the Western hemisphere in 1999; however, this disease spread has not generally been called a pandemic, most probably because transmission rates have been moderate and symptomatic cases have been relatively few. Infamous pandemics have tended to exhibit not only high transmission rates but also “explosive” spread—that is, multiple cases appearing within a short period of time. This epidemiologic feature characterizes both common-source acquisition and extremely contagious diseases of short incubation periods—for example, the 14th-century plague, cholera in 1831–1832, and flu on many occasions (Morens et al., 2009a).

Novelty

The term pandemic has been used most commonly to describe diseases that are new (that is associated with a new pathogen) and affecting human beings for the first time, or at least associated with novel variants of existing pathogens—for example, antigenic shifts occurring in influenza viruses as they mutate, the emergence of HIV/AIDS when it was recognized in the early 1980s, and COVID-19, which originated in 2019 and spread ra...