Criteria for Pandemic Alert Level

Hi Den, welcome, and thanks for the question.   Of course it's regarding the Zika outbreak 

It was moved to level 5 based on many different criteria.  First, keep in mind, in our small world here for it to be at level 6 would be to declare it's a pandemic, in our view.  The National Institute of Health has declared it to be a pandemic, although the WHO has not done that, but of course the WHO did announce an International Health Emergency. The CDC also recently went to level 1.  So the general consensus is that we're probably one notch under an actual pandemic.

The Pandemic Alert is used as warning that a virus has emerged and is spreading rapidly.  In the old days before the WHO changed its' criteria,  they would have been close to level 5, or perhaps level 4.   We based going to level 5 off overall geographical spread and countries effected, the speed of which it is spread, and the fact that there is no end in sight with no vaccine on the horizon.  So it's slight warning for the future that we have a rough road ahead.  The Zika virus seems to have a fatality rate of around .02%, but in my view, microcephaly may be similar to the a death of a child as the majority of their life is essentially gone.  

The only reason we are not at level 6 is due to the lack of efficient human-to-human transmission and human-to-human community spread., which is something that you would find in a pandemic flu. 

Now, if we did have "limited human-to-human transmission" by way of bodily fluids, and if we could verify how frequent, we would consider level 6.  The reason is because of the combination of the mosquito vector, plus the limited human-to-human spread, the two would equal fairly efficient transmission as a team and it would reach to every corner of the globe causing local community outbreaks - everywhere.  At that point, it would be a pandemic, although a slow moving one.   Keep in mind a pandemic is not defined on how fast it spreads, but more-so on how far it spreads and the number of people infected. 

That's our view and hope it helps to explain.

Kind regards,
Albert