Table of contents

  1. Using this guide
  2. Clinically extremely vulnerable
  3. Coronavirus and COVID-19
  4. Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
  5. Deaths and COVID-19
  6. Furlough
  7. Local lockdowns and restrictions
  8. Lockdown
  9. Long COVID
  10. New variants of the coronavirus
  11. NHS Test and Trace
  12. Outbreak or pandemic
  13. Pre-coronavirus and pre-lockdown
  14. Quarantine
  15. R number
  16. Self Employment Income Support Scheme Grants
  17. Self-isolation
  18. Shielding
  19. Social distancing
  20. Spread
  21. Support bubble
  22. Vaccines and vaccinations 
  23. Waves

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Outbreak or pandemic

Use the term “pandemic” when referring to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic rather than “outbreak”. You should always use “coronavirus” before “pandemic” on the first use in a section. Once you have introduced this term, you can use just “pandemic” in other instances in that section. 

A pandemic is where a disease is prevalent over a whole country or the world and so is more accurate than outbreak, which refers to increases of a disease in a particular time or place. The World Health Organization classified COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. 

Avoid using the phrase “pre-pandemic”. See Pre-coronavirus, pre-pandemic and pre-lockdown.