Health experts disagree on terming COVID-19 in waves

GENEVA: The term “second wave” sounds ominous, as if the novel coronavirus had briefly retreated and were about to come crashing down on the world with even greater strength.

However, health experts disagree on the usefulness and the exact meaning of the term that has gained popularity amid a renewed rise in COVID-19 case numbers in countries such as Germany, Israel and Spain.

The situation is seen as a wave because case numbers are often expressed in graphs that curve upwards and downwards, according to Heiner Fangerau, who works at the institute for medical history, theory and ethics at Dusseldorf University in Germany.

However, pandemics do not necessarily develop in waves, he pointed out.

“The plague raged for more than seven years in the Middle Ages. One cannot talk of waves,” Fangerau said, adding that the word should not be applied to past cholera outbreaks either.

While the second wave of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 is said to have been worse than the first one, Fangerau describes it differently: “After a peak in spring, more people became ill again in autumn and winter, compared to summer.”

The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s national disease control body, does not have a definition for “waves”. — dpa

Unlike the 2009 swine flu pandemic that spread without triggering much change in the way people behaved, the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic depends on whether people travel, attend parties or meet friends.