Epidemic vs Pandemic - Difference and Comparison

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	Epidemic	Pandemic
Definition:	An epidemic occurs when the incidence rate (i.e. new cases in a given human population, during a given period) of a certain disease substantially exceeds what is "expected," based on recent experience.	A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that spreads through human populations across a large region, like a continent.

[edit] Definitions

An epidemic (from Greek epi- upon + demos people) is a classification of a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is "expected," based on recent experience (the number of new cases in the population during a specified period of time is called the "incidence rate").

A pandemic (from Greek παν pan all + δήμος demos people) is an epidemic that spreads across a large region (for example a continent), or even worldwide.

[edit] Differences

Simply put, when an epidemic gets out of hand, it is called a pandemic. This has 2 nuances:

Geographical spread
- An epidemic that is not localized to a city or a small region but spans a larger geographical area can be called a pandemic.
Incidence rate
- An epidemic may be localized to a small region but the number of people affected may be very, very large compared to what is "expected". In this case, it can be called a pandemic even if its geographical spread is not very large. For example, let us say that a disease has an "expected" rate of infection of 15%. When 40% of the population of a state is infected, we have an epidemic on our hands. When 75% of the population is infected, it has reached pandemic proportions.