• Question: what characteristics need to met for something to be classified as an epidemic

    Asked by anon-186214 to Trystan on 5 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Trystan Leng

      Trystan Leng answered on 5 Nov 2018: last edited 5 Nov 2018 11:08 am

      Great question!
      For some diseases, there are usually no cases in a population. For other diseases, there is an amount of that disease that is usually present in a population. In both cases, we call this the endemic level of infection.

      An epidemic occurs when there is a sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease above the level of what we would expect. What counts as a ‘sudden increase’ depends on that disease and its endemic level of infection.

Comments