Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
A pandemic is the global outbreak of a disease. There are many examples of pandemics in history, the most recent being COVID-19, as declared by the World Health Organization on March 12, 2020.
Generally, pandemics are first classified as epidemics – the rapid spread of a disease across a particular region or regions. The Zika virus outbreak that began in Brazil in 2014 and made its way across the Caribbean and Latin America was an epidemic, as was the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2016. The U.S. has been experiencing an opioid epidemic since 2017 because of the widespread misuse and high numbers of deaths caused by the drug. COVID-19 started as an epidemic in China before becoming a pandemic, after its rampant spread around the world in a matter of months.
However, it must be noted that epidemics don't always become pandemics, and it's not always a fast or clear transition. For example, HIV was considered an epidemic in West Africa for decades before becoming a pandemic in the late 20th century. Now, thanks to advances in modern medicine, it is considered endemic, which means the rate of the disease is stable and predictable among certain populations, according to the American Medical Association.
(Adapted from livescience.com)