Modern life: international travel.

We may live in one place but we visit friends and colleagues in other places. We go abroad on our holidays. We buy food, clothes and the latest gadgets from across the globe. Modern day transport (planes, ships, cars) means that we are able to travel and trade further, and more easily, than anyone has ever before.

With us travelling all over the world, it means that the mico-organisms that live on us can hitch a ride and join us on our holidays! This also means bacteria that cause infection can also be carried. In this way, pathogens have an easy route to spreading around the planet. And they certainly make the most of it!!

Just look at the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of how an infective organism can start in one place, and quickly spread around the planet.

So what is a pandemic?

Many infectious diseases are endemic in a particular population, which means the infection is constantly present at relatively low levels (at ‘steady state’), without influence from outside. For example, the childhood infection chickenpox is endemic in the United Kingdom, but the tropical disease malaria is not.

An epidemic is a sudden spread of an infection to a large number of people, in very short time, way above the normal levels. An epidemic is usually caused by novel pathogens most people in that population are not immune against (for example, the Ebola virus in Africa), or a new strain of an existing pathogen (for example, seasonal influenza).

A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that spreads across whole continents or even globally, all around the world. Pandemics often affect a substantial number of people, can lead to many deaths and disrupt the societies and damage the economies of countries.

The most recent example of a global pandemic is the catastrophic outbreak of COVID-19, which has already infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide and caused more than 6.5 million deaths since January 2020. But throughout history, humans have experienced many other devastating epidemics and pandemics of diseases like plague, cholera, smallpox and polio (see our timeline for more details).

Scientists, doctors and politicians now need to be prepared for the possibility of a bacterial pandemic caused by antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Pandemic Game

Try out our game, and learn how certain infective micro-organisms manage to spread from country to country!

You may then understand better how diseases can cause devastating outbreaks and travel across the globe.

Send us a screenshot of your game, or tweet us @CUSuperbugs!