The Importance of Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework (PSAF)
Ever since the world came into existence, many epidemics and pandemics have harshly hit the world. Whether we talk about flues and plagues or 21st century's West African Ebola epidemic, Zika Virus, and Coronavirus, they caused millions of deaths worldwide. They also harshly affected the world's largest economies, manufacturing industries, corporations, the education sector, and other industries as well. Whenever these types of epidemics and pandemics hit the world, they cause the loss of millions of lives and also disturb the entire system of the world. Therefore, it is very important to make the right decisions at the initial stage of the pandemic. However, it is not possible until we have an idea of the severity of the pandemic.
On February 1, 2007, the United States Department of Health and Human Services released Pandemic Severity Index (PSI). It was originally developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a pandemic planning tool. The PSI was based on the linear method and so there were a few limitations in this clinical scale. It was replaced by the Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework (PSAF) in 2014 which is an evaluation framework to evaluate a novel influenza pandemic severity. Let's understand this pandemic severity evaluation tool in detail.
What is Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework?
As the name suggests, PSAF is a novel influenza pandemic evaluation framework that is based on the quadrants method. It estimates the impact of a novel influenza pandemic based on the evaluation of clinical severity and transmissibility. Clinical severity refers to "how serious the health condition is of a person due to the infection associated with the pandemic" while transmissibility means "how easily the virus associated with the pandemic travels person-to-person."
Generally, public health officials use this pandemic evaluation tool at national levels. They calculate the clinical severity based on case fatality rates (percentage of people diagnosed with the infection associated with the pandemic and eventually dying of it), case hospitalization ratio, and death hospitalizations ratio while transmissibility is calculated based on the data of school attack rates, household attack rates, workplace attack rates, community attack rates, and rates of influenza-like illness. A combined evaluation of both clinical severity and transmissibility helps public health officials to reach a conclusion.
How Pandemic Severity is Assessed Using PSAF?
Pandemic severity is assessed in two stages based on clinical severity and transmissibility using PSAF. At the first stage, the pandemic severity assessment is done at the initial stage of the pandemic when the infection transmission is limited to only a few countries and communities. The outcome of this assessment doesn't provide an accurate result, but it helps public health officials to estimate the impact of the pandemic. At the second stage, the pandemic severity assessment is done when the pandemic crosses its initial stage and transmits faster from community to community. The outcome of this assessment is compared with the records and data related to previous epidemics and pandemics to reach a conclusion. This pandemic severity evaluation helps public health officials evaluate the impact of the pandemic accurately.
The Importance of Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework
Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework is important from many perspectives. Not only does it evaluate the impact of the pandemic but also significantly contributes to making the right decision to save humanity. Some of the significant contributions of PSAF include:
It helps in estimating the longevity of the pandemic.
It aids public health officials and governments to take precautionary and preventive steps as soon as possible.
It also assists governments in spreading awareness among the common people.
It contributes to estimating the resources required during the pandemic period for the diagnosis of patients.
With all these contributions of PSAF in mind, it won't be wrong to say that PSAF significantly contributes to controlling the impact of a pandemic. Thus, it is crucial for humanity.
In the end, we hope it was an informative reading for you. Check out the official website of Medical Algorithms for such more useful and informative write-ups.