Scientists say the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak could soon be declared a pandemic. Here's what that means.

• Scientists say the Wuhan coronavirus that has so far killed 362 people and infected over 17,000 could soon become a pandemic.
• A pandemic is defined as "the worldwide spread of a new disease," according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
• It's also defined by a lack of available treatment, a lack of human immunity, and an ability to spread from person to person.
• "It's very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic," Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told The New York Times.
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Scientists and disease experts say the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak could soon be declared a pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) designated the coronavirus - whose scientific name is 2019-nCoV - a "public-health emergency of international concern" last week. Calling the virus a pandemic would take it to a new level, however, since that term refers to a more worldwide outbreak.

"It's very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told The New York Times.

Here are the criteria for a virus to be labeled a pandemic:

• The WHO defines a pandemic as "the worldwide spread of a new disease."
• A pandemic disease spreads across "several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people," according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• Virus outbreaks can be characterized as a pandemic if the disease is "markedly different from recently circulating strains" and if "humans have little or no immunity" to it, according to the UK's Health and Safety Executive.
• A disease becomes a pandemic when it can infect many humans over a large area, be transferred from person to person, and cause clinical illness, the HSE said.

The term epidemic, by contrast, refers to a more localized or regional outbreak, rather than a global one. That's what health agencies so far consider the coronavirus outbreak to be.

The CDC says an epidemic is an "increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area."

Similarly, the WHO defines an epidemic as the "occurrence in a community or region of cases of an illness, specific health-related behavior, or other health-related events clearly in excess of normal expectancy."

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former CDC director, told The Times that it is "increasingly unlikely that the [2019-nCoV] virus can be contained."

He added: "It is therefore likely that it will spread, as flu and other organisms do, but we still don't know how far, wide, or deadly it will be."

Robert Webster, an infectious disease expert at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, told the Associated Press that "it sounds and looks as if it's going to be a very highly transmissible virus."

The Wuhan coronavirus has killed 362 people and infected more than 17,000 in more than 24 countries since the first cases were reported in December. All but one of those deaths took place in China. On Saturday, a man in the Philippines became the first to die of the virus outside of China.

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