For this free PTE reading practice, we will look at multiple questions which have single answers. For this question type, you are given a text up to 300 words long, and will need to select the correct answer. You only need to select one answer.
Here’s a practice exercise to test your skills this with PTE question type. Read the text and answer the question by selecting the correct response. Only one response is correct.
With evidence of the devastating effects of the great 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza pandemic available, and with recurring disease pandemics over the past century, the preparedness of the global health community to a repeat or new outbreak of a killer disease is a subject of much concern. “We need to get serious about respiratory viruses”, comments Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at Baltimore’s John Hopkins Center for Health Security in the U.S. When asked how serious the next global pandemic might be, Dr. Robert Webster, called ‘the flu hunter’ by Smithsonian Magazine, responded “God knows! One of the many things that we cannot forecast is how severe a flu epidemic or pandemic will be.”
The focus of a new pandemic has mainly been on an airborne virus being the culprit behind any new outbreak, as opposed to the pathogens, or disease-causing microorganisms, which are the cause of the Ebola and Zika viruses, two relatively new diseases. It is generally acknowledged that diseases such as Ebola and Zika, which are spread mainly through bodily fluid contact, are not likely to cause a global pandemic, while airborne viruses, even the common cold virus, present a greater threat. A quick understanding of the terms is perhaps in order. A disease that is referred to as ‘endemic’ is a disease that is localised in one area, perhaps with the potential to spread, but more commonly related to a particular region, such as malaria, which is more commonly found in Africa, and parts of Asia. An ‘epidemic’ refers to an outbreak of disease spreading through a community, which may be a local village or metropolitan area, or through a regionalised rural area, while a ‘pandemic’ is a disease which has the potential to spread worldwide, which gives health professionals perhaps the greatest concern.