The Spanish flu of 1918 killed around 5.5 million people. The coronavirus could cause higher mortality than H1N1, researchers say.
- US researchers compare the 2018 Spanish flu outbreak with the current coronavirus * pandemic.
- To do this, they use data on infection and death rates * from public institutions.
- Their result: the coronavirus could be more deadly than the H1N1 virus of the Spanish flu - although it killed around 5 million people.
New York - it took about 50 million people from the world - that many died during the Spanish flu in 1918. But the novel corona virus could still be fatal, US scientists have now calculated. And that too, if the progress in medicine is included.
For a study published on the Jama Network scientific platform, US researchers * compared the Spanish flu outbreak 100 years ago to the current coronavirus pandemic - the results are somewhat terrifying.
Coronavirus vs. Spanish flu: the current pandemic could be more deadly than that of 1918
The good news first: The deaths related to the coronavirus in Germany are currently at a low level:
The daily number of deaths among #coronavirus-infected people in 🇩🇪 is still at a greatly reduced level.
Six patients died yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths to 9231. @ welt pic.twitter.com/kkzTuyk9As
But this is not and was not the case worldwide - for various reasons: For their study, the researchers compared the number of people who died above the so-called “baseline” from the critical months of the pandemic in 1918 with the critical months of that year in New York . While around 31,589 people died in connection with the virus in the 5.5 million metropolis of New York by 1918, there were around 33,465 deaths in the 8.2 million metropolis by 2020. This means that the absolute increase in the mortality rate from the H1N1 virus was slightly above the mortality rate * from SARS-CoV2 - but the researchers are making one restriction.
Coronavirus and Spanish flu: H1N1 or Sars-CoV-2 - that's the difference in terms of death rate
Because the general death rate in the years before the current pandemic was significantly lower than before the pandemic of 2018 due to improved living conditions , the increase in the death rate was comparatively much stronger: the relative increase is statistically higher than the absolute.
However, medical progress in particular makes it difficult to compare the effects of the two types of viruses - and thus their dangerousness -: According to the researchers, it is difficult to understand how many lives could be saved in 2020 by ventilators and artificial oxygen supply .
Their conclusion is nevertheless: Even if you take medical advances into account, the mortality rate for Sars-CoV-2 is just as high or even slightly higher than the mortality rate for H1N1. This makes their study a clear recommendation for more caution and stricter measures * in the USA, according to the authors.
(kat / * Merkur.de is part of the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editors network.)