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Published in September 28, 2020 06:46 am
The new coronavirus pandemic has a higher cost compared to other modern viruses.
PARIS (AFP) – The new coronavirus pandemic, which has passed the million-death milestone, has a higher death toll compared to other modern viruses, although so far it has been much less lethal than the Spanish flu a century ago .
As the pandemic continues, the death toll from an AFP count is only provisional, but provides a benchmark for comparing the new coronavirus with that of other viruses, past and present.
– 21st century virus –
SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the Covid-19 infection, has been the deadliest of the viruses of the 21st century.
In 2009, the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, caused a global pandemic and left an official death toll of 18,500.
This was later revised upward by The Lancet medical journal, to between 151,700 and 575,400 deaths.
In 2002-2003, the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus that emerged from China was the first coronavirus to sparked global fears, but it killed only 774 people in the bottom line.
– Flu epidemics –
The death toll from Covid-19 is often compared to that of the deadly seasonal flu, although the latter rarely makes headlines.
Globally, seasonal flu is responsible for up to 650,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the 20th century, two major non-seasonal flu pandemics, the Asian flu in 1957-1958 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968-1970, each killed about a million people, according to later counts.
Both pandemics occurred in circumstances other than Covid-19, before globalization intensified and accelerated economic exchange and travel, and with it the rapid spread of deadly viruses.
The largest modern pandemic catastrophe to date, the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, wiped out about 50 million people according to research published in the 2000s.
– Tropical viruses –
The death toll from the new coronavirus is already much higher than that from Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which was first identified in 1976 and in its last outbreak in 2018-2020 killed nearly 2,300 people.
In four decades, periodic Ebola outbreaks have killed about 15,000 people, all in Africa.
Ebola has a much higher death rate than Covid-19: about 50 percent of infected people die from it, and this has risen to 90 percent in some of the epidemics.
But Ebola is less contagious than other viral diseases, mainly because it is not transmitted through the air, but rather is transmitted through direct and close contact.
Dengue fever, which can also be fatal, comes at a lower cost. This flu-like illness spread by the bite of an infected mosquito has been on the rise for two decades, but causes only a few thousand deaths per year.
– Other viral epidemics –
AIDS is by far the deadliest modern epidemic – nearly 33 million people worldwide have died from the disease, which affects the immune system.
First detected in 1981, no effective vaccine has been found.
But retroviral drugs, when taken regularly, efficiently stop the disease and greatly reduce the risk of contamination.
This treatment has helped reduce the death toll from its peak in 2004 of 1.7 million deaths to 690,000 in 2009, according to UNAIDS.
Hepatitis B and C viruses also have a high death toll, killing about 1.3 million people each year, most often in poor countries.
Main data source: World Health Organization (WHO).
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