Coronavirus: What history tells us as virus sweeps the globe

As it’s crossed international borders, the rapid spread of the infectious disease has sparked fear around the globe.

Yet the emergence of new diseases is far from a modern phenomenon.

Scientists are racing to better understand the disease, which is believed to have originated in bats, in order to create a vaccine and halt the virus’ spread.

And along with public health officials they are learning from past outbreaks in a bid to contain it and reduce its impact.

Throughout history humanity has been forced to battle many devastating epidemics – and each instance has brought with it a wave of panic.

Infected

This, however, is the first truly global outbreak in the era of social media, and as such the panic has spread quickly.

China’s new battle with coronavirus is reminiscent of the deadly Sars – severe acute respiratory syndrome – epidemic which spread to more than two dozen countries in 2003.

There were about 8,100 cases of Sars, a type of coronavirus, reported during the eight-month outbreak that threatened a world-wide pandemic.

China was criticised for its slow response to Sars because by the time outbreak was contained, the virus had already spread to over 8,000 people worldwide and killed almost 800.

This time has been praised for responding to the latest virus with tougher measures, including quarantining millions of residents in cities.

“Fortunately the mortality rate for this virus is low with deaths occurring only in the young and old and those with existing conditions that may make them more ill if infected,” says Dr Martin Khechara, Associate Professor for Engagement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths at the University of Wolverhampton.

“Still we can see how something like this is a definite worry and shows how a disease can spread so rapidly around the world.

“The thing is, we, the public, just don’t know enough about what’s going on when scientists in the UK and around the world are working together to crack the genetic code of the virus and create new vaccines at breakneck speed.”

The 2009 swine flu pandemic, also known as H1N1, started, as the name suggests, in pigs. It spread rapidly from country to country because it was a new type of flu virus that few young people were immune to. It killed nearly 300,000 people in a global pandemic and spread to 214 countries in under a year.

The virus reached Britain in April 2009 and overall the outbreak was not as serious as originally predicted, largely because many older people were already immune to it.

Although most cases in the UK were relatively mild, there were around 138 deaths as a result of the outbreak. It eventually petered out.

The death rates from quick-spreading diseases have reduced as medical progress has advanced, and modern outbreaks pale into insignificance compared to some that have swept the globe in history.

Rare

When bubonic plague struck Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351, it killed between 75 and 200 million people.

Rats have long been blamed for the spread of plague but recent studies have suggested that it could largely be ascribed to human fleas and body lice.

While extremely rare, the plague still continues to be a threat to humans today and is endemic in some countries of Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The spread of the 14th century outbreak was eventually curtailed. One theory is that disease killed off those people that were most susceptible to the plague, leaving those who were naturally immune or in better health.

The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide – about one-third of the planet’s population.

It’s believed that up to 50 million lives could have been lost to the flu, with the death toll in Britain alone at 228,000.

The flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the globe.

At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer strain making it harder to contain. The pandemic ended as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.

In more recent history there has been a rise in the number of diseases spilled over to humans from creatures such as birds and pigs. This is something experts predict will become more common in the future as the population grows.

“We now often live in densely populated communities where disease can spread easily,” Dr Khechera adds. “We invade environments where we have never been before in the constant search for resources, exposing ourselves to new potential infections.”

Many of those initially infected in Wuhan – the city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak – either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market, which also sold live and newly slaughtered animals.

The World Health Organization says the current outbreak falls short of the definition of a pandemic.

Control

They say one of the reasons for this is that it’s not spreading within countries at the moment, except in a very few cases and the majority of patients are travellers who picked up the virus in China.

And that’s why experts say there is no reason to panic about the risk to Britain at this stage as precautionary methods have so far been paying off.

The NHS is said to be “well-prepared” for cases and the government is now telling travellers arriving in the UK from a total of nine Asian countries and territories to check for symptoms.

It comes as the WHO creates a global research and innovation forum to mobilise international action in response to the outbreak which includes the development of vaccines.

“Harnessing the power of science is critical for bringing this outbreak under control,” said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“There are questions we need answers to, and tools we need developed as quickly as possible. WHO is playing an important coordinating role by bringing the scientific community together to identify research priorities and accelerate progress.”