In the second part, Dr Naik provides the timeline of various pandemics that have ravaged humanity and in the course had profound effects on societies throughout history.

 

 1875:  Measles Pandemic

Measles is an acute highly infectious disease of childhood caused by a specific group of Myxovirurses. Measles is endemic virtually in all parts of the world. It tends to occur in epidemics when the population of susceptible children reaches about 40 percent. 

 

During 1875 when Fiji acceded to the British Empire, a royal party visited Australia, arriving during a measles outbreak. The royal party contracted the virus and brought the disease to their island. Spreading quickly, the island was littered with corpses that were scavenged by wild animals, and entire villages died. The graves are still there, silent, beneath century-old trees. In 1875 Fijians buried one-third of their population – all dead as a result of measles. At the time “death drums sounded incessantly in seemingly deserted villages,” and “graves were only half dug because no one had the strength to dig.”

 

1889: Russian Flu

 

The first significant flu pandemic started in Siberia and Kazakhstan, traveled to Moscow, and made its way into Finland and then Poland, where it moved into the rest of Europe. In 1889–1890, a pandemic, sometimes known as the "Asiatic flu"or "Russian flu", killed about 1 million people worldwide, out of a population of about 1.5 billion. It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century, and is among the deadliest pandemics in history. The most reported effects of the pandemic took place from October 1889 to December 1890, with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, winter of 1893–1894, and early 1895.

 

1918: Spanish Flu

 

The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 influenza pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world's population at the time – in four successive waves. The death toll is typically estimated to have been somewhere between 20 million and 50 million, although estimates range from a conservative 17 million to a possible high of 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

 

The avian-borne flu that resulted in million deaths worldwide, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain .By October, hundreds of thousands of Americans died and body storage scarcity hit crisis level. But the flu threat disappeared in the summer of 1919 when most of the infected had either developed immunities or died.

 

1957: Asian flu

 

The 1957–1958 Asian flu pandemic was a global pandemic of influenza A virus subtype H2N2 that originated in Guizhou in southern China.The number of deaths caused by the 1957–1958 pandemic is estimated between one and four million worldwide, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. A decade later, a reassorted viral strain H3N2 further caused the Hong Kong flu pandemic (1968–1969).Starting in Hong Kong and spreading throughout China and then into the United States, the Asian flu became widespread in England where, over six months, 14,000 people died. A second wave followed in early 1958, causing an estimated total of about 1.1 million deaths globally, with 116,000 deaths in the United States alone. A vaccine was developed, effectively containing the pandemic.

 

1981: HIV/AIDS

 

HIV/AIDS, or human immunodeficiency virus, is considered by some authors a global pandemic. However, the WHO currently uses the term 'global epidemic' to describe HIV. As of 2018, approximately 37.9 million people are infected with HIV globally. There were about 770,000 deaths from AIDS in 2018. The 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study, in a report published in The Lancet, estimated that the global incidence of HIV infection peaked in 1997 at 3.3 million per year. Global incidence fell rapidly from 1997 to 2005, to about 2.6 million per year, but remained stable from 2005 to 2015

 

First identified in 1981, AIDS destroys a person’s immune system, resulting in eventual death by diseases that the body would usually fight off. Those infected by the HIV virus encounter fever, headache, and enlarged lymph nodes upon infection. When symptoms subside, carriers become highly infectious through blood and genital fluid, and the disease destroys t-cells.

 

2003: SARS

 

The 2002–2004 SARS outbreak was an epidemic involving severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1). The outbreak was first identified in Foshan, Guangdong, China, on 16 November 2002. First identified in 2003 after several months of cases, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is believed to have possibly started with bats, spread to cats and then to humans in China, followed by 29 other countries, infecting 8,096 people, with 774 deaths. The major part of the outbreak lasted about 8 months, since the World Health Organization declared SARS contained on 5 July 2003. However, several SARS cases were reported until May 2004.

 

2019: Covid-19

 

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019.The disease has since spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic.

 

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 virus was officially a pandemic after barreling through 114 countries in three months and infecting over 118,000 people. And the spread wasn’t anywhere near finished.

 

COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus—a new coronavirus strain that has not been previously found in people. Symptoms include respiratory problems, fever and cough, and can lead to pneumonia and death. Like SARS, it’s spread through droplets from sneezes.

The first reported case in China appeared November 17, 2019, in the Hubei Province, but went unrecognized. Eight more cases appeared in December with researchers pointing to an unknown virus

Dr Suhail Naik
Consultant Pediatrician
G B Pant Children Hospital