Scopes and Barriers for Effective Management of Biological Hazard Induced Pandemic: Lessons From 1918 Spanish Flu and 2020 COVID-19

Biological hazard induced pandemic events have become recurring phenomena in this globe. Time after time, human civilization is facing crisis due to occurrence of pandemic like situations. It is difficult to precisely assess the risk factors associated with newly originated virus induced pandemic due to unknown characteristics of such virus.  Unlike many natural hazards, there may not be any early warning signs for such biological hazard induced pandemic events.  So, pandemic management is a complex job having multidimensional aspects. In-depth analysis of significant past pandemic events is necessary to understand the scopes and barriers of pandemic management. The ongoing global crisis pertaining to COVID-19 induced pandemic has similarity to that of Spanish Flu induced disaster event of 1918, in terms of characteristics, modes of transmission, and damage potentials of health hazards. Careful review of crisis situations related to Spanish Flu and COVID-19 originated pandemic events may be useful to formulate holistic strategy for pandemic management and damage mitigation.  In this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the hazard-vulnerability profiles of both Spanish Flu and COVID-19 induced disaster events and highlight probable scopes and barriers pertaining to management of biological hazard induced pandemic events