We've heard the word pandemic being coined around the novel Corona virus before, with the likes of the German health minister, Jens Spahn, using it earlier on Wednesday.

But the announcement from the W.

H O is certainly significant.

They had previously been calling the novel Corona virus spread of a very high risk.

That's the highest level that they had before officially making the declaration off a pandemic.

Now they say, this was because, as we heard in that salt there, they were severely concerned by both the alarming levels of spread and severity on the inaction from relevant governments.

Now the announcement is certainly got a lot of people talking on social media.

The word Pandey Mia is currently top trending on Twitter.

And if we look at Google trends, the word pandemic very little interest over the last week until it reached a huge fight today with that W H show announcement, a lot of people taking to search engines to ask What exactly does this mean on what is the context?

Well, let me try and answer a few questions about exactly what this means with regard to the novel Corona virus.

It started out as a small outbreak.

That's what, Then there's a small but unusual number of similar cases of one virus, particularly in this case in Wuhan, WHO?

A province that then grew to an epidemic from an outbreak to an epidemic.

When it goes over, a larger geographical area on other people started to get affected.

But when does this epidemic become a pandemic?

Well, the definition that a lot of people refer to is from the Dictionary of Epidemiology.

And they say that a pandemic is one of an epidemic which occurs worldwide over a larger area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a larger number of people.

Now, as we heard, the World Health Organization, have been very careful to say that it is not a word that they used carelessly on.

What it actually means is that really it doesn't change the assessment off the threat posed by this novel Corona virus, and it certainly doesn't change what they are doing and advising governments to do when it comes this now for context.

The last very late show pandemic declaration was made in 2009 over the H one n one influenza outbreak, more commonly known as swine flu.

No other Corona viruses such a SARS in 2000 to 3 that wasn't declared upon them it because it was largely contained within both China on Hong Kong.

But a clear message here.

Ali with this declaration that while it doesn't necessarily change much in terms of their response, they say that this means that they're trying to call for more urgent action, perhaps from both governments and authorities, to help with this virus outbreak.