Upadhyay Madhu Kumari, Maroof Khan Amir
Department of Community Medicine, University College of Medical Sciences and GTB Hospital, Dilshad Garden, Delhi, India.
J Family Med Prim Care. 2020 Dec 31;9(12):5881-5887. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_960_20. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). During this phase of the health crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, news in print, electronic as well as the social media is abuzz with several emerging and reemerging terminologies. Some of them, such as "social distancing," "infodemic," "flattening the curve," "quarantine," "cluster containment," and others were not in routine use but have suddenly reemerged and become the key toward understanding the disease and its prevention. Many of these terms have been a part of public health strategies used for centuries for containment of the spread of infectious diseases. These terms span across social, epidemiological, and administrative contexts concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Our article aims to present a better understanding of the meaning and origin of these terms and their application in the context of the current pandemic based on a review of the available literature such as chapters from textbooks, published guidelines of the WHO and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published articles in journals and newspapers through a comprehensive search of the electronic database in English.
冠状病毒病（COVID-19）已被世界卫生组织（WHO）宣布为国际关注的突发公共卫生事件。在由COVID-19大流行引发的这一健康危机阶段，印刷媒体、电子媒体以及社交媒体上充斥着一些新出现和再次出现的术语。其中一些术语，如“社交距离”“信息疫情”“ flattening the curve”（曲线变平）、“隔离”“聚集性疫情防控”等，并非日常使用的词汇，但突然再次出现，并成为理解该疾病及其预防的关键。这些术语中有许多是数百年来用于控制传染病传播的公共卫生策略的一部分。这些术语涵盖了与COVID-19大流行相关的社会、流行病学和行政背景。我们的文章旨在通过全面检索英文电子数据库，基于对现有文献的综述，如教科书章节、世界卫生组织和疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）发布的指南以及期刊和报纸上发表的文章，更好地理解这些术语的含义、起源及其在当前大流行背景下的应用。
