Could a coronavirus pandemic be stopped? US warns of ?severe? disruptions

That's two of the three factors for a pandemic, she said.Stay up to date on coronavirus:Get USA TODAY's Daily Briefing in your inbox“As community spread is detected in more and more countries, the world moves closer to meeting the third criteria – worldwide spread of the new virus,” Messonnier said.Although the World Health Organization determined Monday that the term pandemic "did not fit the facts," experts said it very soon could.Dennis Carroll, former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Health Security and Development Unit, credited China's "extraordinary control measures" with delaying the spread of the virus, but he said avoiding a pandemic is "very unlikely.""The dramatic uptick of cases in South Korea, Iran and Italy are reflective of a self-sustaining spreading of the virus and a clear message that the horse is out of the barn," Carroll, who leads the Global Virome Project science cooperative, told USA TODAY. "We are talking about rapid-fire and sustained transmission."The global death toll from coronavirus rose to 2,762 on Tuesday night, with more than 81,000 confirmed cases.That means redirecting the focus from containment measures to preparing for treatment of big numbers of sick patients with antivirals while continuing the effort to develop an effective vaccine, he said.'An economic pandemic': The coronavirus becomes a bigger economic threatBeyond an epidemic, which involves a defined region, a pandemic has global impact.