The world is on edge. As of Tuesday, the deadly COVID-19, which originated from Wuhan, China, last December, has travelled to over 186 countries and territories and has killed at least 75,964 people around the globe. Over 943,122 others are battling the virus. With its rapid, unrelenting spread, it is difficult to predict how much farther the plague will go, how many more lives it will claim and when the world will finally heave a sigh of relief.
The United States of America, which has now overtaken China in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and mortalities, believes it may record as many as between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths, and that there may not be a respite from the disease until June.
Apart from its direct impact on human’s physical well-being, the world economy is also taking a beating, with experts saying another global recession may be in the offing.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the World Trade Organisation have warned of the risk of a worldwide “food shortage” if authorities fail to manage the crisis properly.
But while the raging coronavirus has been described as novel, history indicates that this is not the first time the world will be witnessing a pandemic of this frightening scale.
History books document the 1918 influenza pandemic, which reportedly afflicted about 500 million people – a third of the world’s population then – and killed between 20 and 50 million – possibly even up to 100 million – people around the globe.
Christened Spanish flu, it was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world, according to HISTORY.COM.
The online site said just as the case with COVID-19 now, “at that time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer (Spanish) flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march.”
Online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, recorded that the Spanish flu ravaged the world for nearly three years, between January 1918 and December 1920 and could have claimed up to 100 million lives worldwide, making it the deadliest pandemic yet in the world’s history.
It was said that more people died of the Spanish flu in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years.
According to livescience.com, with 25 per cent of its population sick with the Spanish flu and as many as 675,000 lives lost, the United States of America was one of the hardest hit by the 1918 influenza pandemic.
“The impact on the population was so severe that in 1918, American life expectancy was reduced by 12 years,” livescience.com said in a piece titled, “Spanish flu: The deadliest pandemic in history.”
But apart from the Spanish flu, the world has also seen similarly scary pandemics over the ages.
Some of these include the Hong Kong flu of 1968-1969, which, according to Wikipedia, infected over 500 million people around the world and killed an estimated one million people; the Russian flu of 1889-1890, which also reportedly claimed about one million lives; and the Asian flu of 1956-1958, which, the World Health Organisation recorded, killed two million people.
Like the Spanish flu of 1918, and the other ones, COVID-19 afflicts the respiratory system.
COVID-19, according to the WHO, is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
The disease, WHO says, is relatively mild in about 80 per cent of cases.
It adds, “The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, tiredness, and dry cough. Some patients may have aches and pains, nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat or diarrhea. These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but don’t develop any symptoms and don’t feel unwell.”
It quoted Dr Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine and global health at Emory University, who has consulted with colleagues to treat coronavirus patients in China and Germany, to have said, “Some people also get a headache, sore throat.”
Fatigue has also been reported – and less commonly, diarrhea. It may feel as if you have a cold. Or you may feel that flu-like feeling of being hit by a train.
As the virus enters lung cells, it starts to replicate, destroying the cells, explains Dr Yoko Furuya, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre.
“Because our body senses all of those viruses as basically foreign invaders, that triggers our immune system to sweep in and try to contain and control the virus and stop it from making more and more copies of itself,” she says.
As of Tuesday, according to Worldometer, the world has recorded a total of 76,315 coronavirus deaths, with Italy leading with 16, 523 mortalities.
Other countries that have recorded heavy fatalities from COVID-19 are Spain, with 13,798 deaths; the United States, with 10,943 deaths; and China, with 3,331 deaths.
But the US is leading with the highest number of confirmed cases – 367,719.
Spain, Italy and China have 140,510; 132,547; and 81,740 confirmed cases, respectively.
Others countries badly affected now include France with 98,010 confirmed cases and 8,911 deaths; Iran with 62,589 confirmed cases and 3,872 deaths; United Kingdom with 51,608 cases and 5,872 deaths; and Netherlands with 19,580 confirmed cases, 2,101 deaths; and Belgium with 22,194 confirmed cases, 2,035 deaths.
As of Tuesday, Nigeria had recorded 238 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across 15 states, and had recorded five deaths.
Despites its ravages, however, what the world can cheer about now is the rate and pattern of recovery from COVID-19, offering hope that the current plague may not likely trouble the world as much as the 1918 Spanish which remains yet the deadliest pandemic in history.
COVID-19 daily updates on Worldometer show that as of early Tuesday, 293,668 patients have recovered out of the 1,362,119 total confirmed cases across the globe.
The updates indicate that the recovery rate stood at 21.5 per cent, compared to the mortality rate of 5.6 per cent.
And looking at it from the number of concluded cases – which is 370,008, with 293,668 patients recovered and 76,340 dead – the survival rate of 79 per cent outweighs the death rate of 21 per cent.
In Nigeria, for example, out of the 238 confirmed cases, 35 patients have recovered and have been discharged, compared to five recorded deaths.
The recovery of the Canadian First Lady, Sophie Trudeau, from COVID-19 as well as the victory of the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, over the disease are also a symbol of hope for the world that many more of the afflicted will survive.
While the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths are mounting in the US and elsewhere, China, where the plague originated from, has now begun to report a decline, following a two-month total lockdown to break the chain of spread.
With other countries around the world taking a cue from the China lockdown, there is hope that soon the COVID-19 transmission chain around the world will break, paving the way for gradual decline in the burden of the disease.
With this, what the world must now pray against is a possible mutation of COVID-19, as was the case with the 1918 Spanish flu.
History shows that following a mutation of the virus, a second wave of the 1918 Spanish flu surfaced and dealt more devastating blow to the world.
“The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low.
“However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years,” HISTORY.COM said.
A Chinese epidemiologist, Ben Cowling of the University of Hong Kong, according to a research journal, Nature, said, “We need to be alert for a potential second wave of infections.”
However, apart from heeding Cowling’s warning, government at all levels and Nigerians should embrace WHO’s five steps to kicking out coronavirus.
These are hand washing, nose and mouth covering, bent elbow or using tissue to cover our mouth and nose when we cough or sneeze, adopt social distancing and stay at home.
Furthermore, government at all levels should empower medical personnel, invest more in the health sector and increase sensitisation to COVID-19.
punch
