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The SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 disease impact is a multifactorial phenomenon to measure it we have to take into account some factors (Section 3.1), so let us only take two of them for the moment; its dissemination capacity and its capacity to kill a human being.

The propagation of viruses has to do with the possibility of passing to any organism and the SARS-CoV-2 virus gets this feature from the Coronaviridae family (Section 3.3.2), which can be considered very high; on the other hand, the lethality of the SARS-CoV-2 is no higher than 2% (Section 3.1), which is low.

However, both factors together create a combination that strongly impacts humans, as their propagation and lethality take on a large number of lives, given the permanence of the virus in human beings.

In this sense, the impact is very high since this coronavirus has a very similar spread to any flu; however, its lethality is very high compared to this disease, as up to date there is no effective treatment or vaccine available; unlike the A H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009 that had an effective treatment and the vaccine was available few months later.

In this regard, any alert or official warning that the population is facing an epidemic process or a pandemic, in general, has to do with a minimum number of people infected that have had a microbiological corroboration.

In the case of an unknown illness, this verification can take days or even weeks; this is a limitation that defers the notification. So, once this alert has been issued, the authorities should state it is a pandemic and not an epidemic event, according to the definition that at least two continents present infected cases, regardless of the number of them.

From the epidemiological point of view, there should be an algorithm that not only considers the number of confirmed cases, as continuous improvement of the means of transport makes contagion and dissemination of illness much faster nowadays.