Did the World Health Organization change the definition of a pandemic by removing the criterion "infectious disease with high mortality"? No, that's not true: Similar claims surfaced online in 2009 during the declaration of the H1N1 influenza pandemic by the Health Organization. The declaration was based on criteria revolving around the incidence and spread of the virus across various World Health Organization regions, without explicit mention of morbidity or mortality. Nonetheless, the Organization didn't alter its definition of pandemic influenza because it never officially defined pandemic influenza to begin with.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by @mislav_kolakusic_rh on February 9, 2024, under the title (translated from Croatian to English by Lead Stories staff): "A large international conference on COVID was held in Brussels, co-organized by the independent representative Mislav Kolakušić, attended by numerous doctors and professors from Europe and the world, Germany, Italy, France, USA, Canada, Mexico. All these medical and legal experts and scientists, and there are tens of thousands of them around the world, have been silenced and censored for the past three years by completely illiterate editors of some portals, administrators of social networks, and editors. The censorship they established will in the future, when the conditions for it are met, be punished by imprisonment as prescribed by law." It opened (as translated):
Very few countries or almost none have a definition of a pandemic. The definition of a pandemic can be found on Wikipedia, and it was written by the World Health Organization. And what did the WHO do in preparation for all this? It amended the definition to remove 'infectious disease with high mortality.' And now a pandemic is any disease that is widespread. That's funny. That's not right. It is a violation of rights at the highest possible level.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun Feb 18 18:51:17 2024 UTC)
Mislav Kolakušić (archived here) is a Croatian lawyer and politician who has been a member of the European Parliament for Croatia since July 2, 2019, as an independent representative. He is known for spreading misinformation (archived here) and conspiracy theories (archived here), especially regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Oxford Reference, a pandemic is defined as (archived here):
An epidemic occurring worldwide or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries, and usually affecting a large number of people.
This definition includes no mention of population immunity, virology or disease severity.
The declaration of the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic (archived here) by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 11, 2009, was based on a thorough examination of available evidence and expert assessments. These evaluations concluded that the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic had been met. Subsequently, discussions (archived here) emerged regarding the definition of a pandemic (archived here), which had never been singular nor unanimously agreed upon. Some contended that the WHO altered its pandemic definition to facilitate the declaration, while others dismissed these claims as unfounded. However, the WHO never modified the definition, as no formal definition had been established (archived here) by the organization. In their Pandemic Preparedness document from 2009, an influenza pandemic is described as:
An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness. With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded conditions, epidemics due the new influenza virus are likely to quickly take hold around the world.
However, this is not a formal or official definition of a pandemic, but merely a description of it. In the WHO's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response (archived here), first developed in 1999 and revised in 2005 and 2009, there is a clear definition of a "pandemic phase" (archived here), but not a "pandemic."
The WHO declared the COVID outbreak (archived here) a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020. It declared it a global pandemic (archived here) on March 11, 2020. Since there is still no formal definition of a pandemic, the claim made by Kolakušić is unfounded.
