spanish flu vaccine :: Article CreatorWhat Is The Flu Virus Likely To Cause The Next Pandemic?
While you've no doubt heard much talk about the dreaded 'Disease X,' experts say the next pandemic will likely be caused by a much more common illness – the flu virus.
That's the result of a new survey of 187 scientists set to be published this weekend at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) congress in Barcelona.
Nearly 60 per cent of experts agree that a flu virus strain will likely spur the next global outbreak.
Cologne University's Jon Salmanton-García, who undertook the study, said that thinking comes as a result of long-term research about influenza.
"Each winter influenza appears," Salmanton-García said.
"You could describe these outbreaks as little pandemics. They are more or less controlled because the different strains that cause them are not virulent enough – but that will not necessarily be the case for ever."
As per The Guardian, scientists said the other likely causes of a pandemic are Disease X (21 per cent), Sars-CoV-2 (15 per cent).
Meanwhile, just one and two per cent of scientists said Lassa, Nipah, Ebola and Zika viruses.
"Influenza remained – by a very large degree, the number one threat in terms of its pandemic potential in the eyes of a large majority of world scientists," Salmanton-García told the newspaper.
But what is influenza? And where could such a virus spring up from?
Let's take a closer look:
What is it?
According to the WHO, influenza, also known as the flu, is an acute respiratory infection. Caused by influenza viruses, these illnesses occur all across the planet.
Its symptoms include
Acute onset of fever
Cough
Sore throat
Body pain
Fatigue
Children usually transmit the virus effectively.
Though kids between 5 and 9 are usually infected the most, it is the elderly and those with severe mobidity that are most at risk.
Though most people shrug off the virus without medicine, getting vaccinated yearly remains the best way to curb the spread of influenza.
The vaccine, though likely less effective in the elderly, reduces the severity of illness, complications and death.
Those that should be vaccinated include:
Interestingly, influenza viruses continuously evolve.
Immunity from one infection does not guarantee protection from another.
Which is why new influenza outbreaks happen every year – and new vaccines have to be formulated to blunt the impact of the disease.
Though children between age 5 and 9 are usually infected the most, it is the elderly and those with severe mobidity that are most at risk.
People can stay safe from influenza by
Washing hands frequently
Covering mouth and nose while coughing or sneezing
Disposing of tissues properly
Remaining at home when unwell
Avoiding contact with ill
Not touching eyes, nose and mouth
There are four different types of influenza viruses in circulation at all times – A, B, C and D.
Though A and B cause acute respiratory illnesses, it is the type A which cause large epidemics and pandemics.
So why should we worry?
Because history shows that it's just a matter of time before a deadly a new flu virus emerges. The previous century witnessed at least three flu pandemics.
The most severe of these was the 1918 Flu Pandemic, also known as the Spanish Flu, which killed around 675,000 people in the United States and left 20 to 50 million people dead around the world.
Some experts say the Kitum cave in Kenya could be the site from where the next pandemic kicks off.
The cave, located in Kenya's Mount Elgon National Park, is believed to be the spot where Ebola emerged.
The salt found in the walls of the cave seemingly attract a whole host of animals, as per Unilad.Com.
According to NDTV, the animals that have been lured in by the salty cave include elephants buffaloes, antelope, leopards, and hyenas – making it a breeding ground for zoonotic infections.
The outlet quoted Science Times as reporting that fruit bats now live in the cave.
The cave also has a dark history when it comes to disease.
A French engineer exploring the cave in 1980 contracted the Marburg virus.
The man then died at a Nairobi hospital from viral hemorrhagic fever.
A Danish boy on vacation also contracted the Ravn virus from the cave.
Experts say H5N1 transmission to humans a concern
The development also comes as experts worry about the avian influenza virus, known as H5N1, possibly spreading to humans.
According to The Guardian, the H5N1 outbreak, which began in 2020, has killed millions of poultry and wild birds across the world.
It has since spread to mammals in 12 states including domestic cattle.
Daniel Goldhill, of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, told the journal Nature the more mammalian species the virus infects, the more opportunities it has to evolve into a strain that is dangerous to humans.
Virologist Ed Hutchinson, of Glasgow University, told The Guardian. "Pigs can get avian flu but until recently cattle did not. They were infected with their own strains of the disease. So the appearance of H5N1 in cows was a shock.
However, it is important to note that there have been no cases of human to human H5N1 transmission till date.
Dr Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), was quoted as saying that the virus has an "extremely high" mortality rate among the several hundred infected till date.
Dairy cow herds in multiple US states have tested positive for bird flu. AP (Representational Image)
"H5N1 is (an) influenza infection, predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic – animal – pandemic," he said.
"The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens – but now increasingly mammals – that that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission."
The senior WHO official also urged health authorities in the US to keep an eye on H151 "because it may evolve into transmitting in different ways".
"Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they're living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?" he asked. "This is a huge concern and I think we have to … make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics."
With inputs from agencies
Covid: Woman Who Lived Through Spanish Flu Gets Vaccine
A 103-year-old woman, who had already lived through one global pandemic, has received her first dose of the Covid vaccine.
Hilda Richards, from Wrexham, who was just a young child during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, also served as a nurse during World War Two.
She had initially gone into a care home for two weeks, but when Covid hit, she stayed there.
After having her jab she said she "felt good".
Inside The Swift, Deadly History Of The Spanish Flu Pandemic
Scientist Johan Hultin traveled to Brevig Mission, Alaska, a town of a few hundred souls in the summer of 1997. He was searching for buried bodies, and Alaska's frozen ground was the perfect place to find them. Digging through the permafrost—with permission from the town's authorities—he eventually uncovered a woman who died almost 80 years previously and was in a state of excellent preservation. Hultin then extracted samples of the woman's lung before reinterring her. He intended to use this to decode the genetic sequence of the virus that had killed this Inuit woman along with 90 percent of the town's population.
Brevig Mission was just one place that was part of a global tragedy, one of the worst ever to befall humanity: the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. The outbreak of this influenza virus, also known as Spanish flu, spread with astonishing speed around the world, overwhelming India, and reaching Australia and the remote Pacific islands. In just 18 months at least a third of the world's population was infected. Estimates on the exact number of fatalities vary wildly, from 20 million to 50 million to 100 million deaths. If the upper end of that estimate is accurate, the 1918 pandemic killed more people than both World Wars put together. (Get the facts on influenza.)
The first official cases of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic were recorded at the U.S. Army's Camp Funston, Kansas, where this emergency influenza ward held treated patients.
SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCK
War and pestilence
Several closely related viruses cause influenza, but one strain (type A) is linked to deadly epidemics. The 1918-19 pandemic was caused by an influenza A virus known as H1N1. Despite becoming known as the Spanish flu, the first recorded cases were in the United States in the final year of World War I. (Explore the memorials of World War I.)
A magnified view of the H1N1 virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic.
SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCK
By March 1918 the United States had been at war with Germany and the Central Powers for 11 months. During that time America's small, prewar army had grown into a vast fighting force that would eventually send more than two million men to Europe. (How the United States entered World War I.)
American forts experienced a massive expansion as the entire nation mobilized for war. One of these was Fort Riley, Kansas, where a new training facility, Camp Funston, was built to house some of the 50,000 men who would be inducted into the Army. It was here in early March that a feverish soldier reported to the infirmary. Within a few hours more than a hundred other soldiers had come down with a similar condition, and more would fall ill over the following weeks. In April more American troops arrived in Europe and brought the virus with them. The first wave of the pandemic had arrived. (What is the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?)
Deadly speed
The Spanish flu strain killed its victims with a swiftness never seen before. In the United States stories abounded of people waking up sick and dying on their way to work. The symptoms were gruesome: Sufferers would develop a fever and become short of breath. Lack of oxygen meant their faces appeared tinged with blue. Hemorrhages filled the lungs with blood and caused catastrophic vomiting and nosebleeds, with victims drowning in their own fluids. Unlike so many strains of influenza before it, Spanish flu attacked not only the very young and the very old, but also healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40.
Biologists at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London are analyzing brain and lung tissue from victims of the 1918 pandemic as part of global efforts to understand the virus. Here, wax-mounted tissue samples sit on a list of children's names who fell victims to influenza in 1918.
SPL/AGE FOOTSTOCK
The principal factor in the virus's spread was, of course, the international conflict then in its last phase. Epidemiologists still dispute the exact origins of the virus, but there is some consensus it was the result of a genetic mutation that perhaps took place in China. But what is clear is that the new strain went global thanks to the massive and rapid movement of troops around the world.
The drama of the war also served to obscure the unusually high mortality rates of the new virus. At this early stage, the illness was not well understood and deaths were often attributed to pneumonia. Strict wartime censorship meant that the European and North American press were unable to report outbreaks. Only in neutral Spain could the press speak freely about what was happening, and it was from this media coverage that the disease took its nickname.
Deadly Contact
Native Americans treat patients infected by European diseases in this 1591 engraving by Theodor de Bry.
GRANGER/ALBUM
Epidemics are as old as civilization: Signs of smallpox appear on 12th-century B.C. Egyptian mummies. Increased contact led to the spread of disease. In the sixth century A.D. The Plague of Justinian moved along trade routes, killing 25 million people across Asia, Africa, Arabia, and Europe. Eight centuries later, the Black Death wiped out 60 percent of Europe's population. When Europeans settled in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, they introduced smallpox, influenza, and measles to the native peoples, killing an estimated 90 percent of the population. Here, Native Americans treat patients infected by European diseases in a 1591 engraving by Theodor de Bry.
The second wave
The overcrowded trenches and encampments of the First World War became the perfect hosts for the disease. As troops moved, so the infection traveled with them. The wave that had first appeared in Kansas abated after a few weeks, but this was only a temporary reprieve. By September 1918 the epidemic was ready to enter its most lethal phase.
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It has been calculated that the 13 weeks between September and December 1918 constituted the most intense period, taking the greatest number of lives. At least 195,000 Americans died in October alone. In comparison, total American military casualties for the whole of World War I came in at just over 116,000. Once again, it was the crowded military encampments where the second wave initially gained a hold. In September an outbreak of 6,674 cases was reported at Camp Devens, a military base in Massachusetts.
As the crisis reached its zenith, the medical services began to be overwhelmed. Morticians and gravediggers struggled, and conducting individual funerals became impossible. Many of the dead ended up in mass graves. The end of 1918 brought a hiatus in the spread of the illness and January 1919 saw the beginning of the third and final phase. By then the disease was a much diminished force. The ferocity of the autumn and winter of the previous year was not repeated and mortality rates fell.
Although the final wave was much less lethal than its predecessors, it was still able to wreak considerable damage. Australia, which had quickly enacted quarantine restrictions, managed to escape the worst of the flu until the beginning of 1919, when the disease finally arrived and took the lives of several thousand Australians.
The Spanish flu did not strike in Australia until 1919. Quarantine camps like this one, in Wallangarra, Queensland, were set up to treat and contain the illness.
PAUL FEARN/ALAMY/ACI
The general trend of mortality, however, was downward. There were cases of deaths from influenza—possibly a different strain—as late as 1920, but by the summer of 1919 health care policies and the natural genetic mutation of the virus brought the epidemic to a close. Even so, its effects, for those left bereaved or suffering long-term health complications, were to last decades.
Lasting impact
The pandemic left almost no part of the world untouched. In Great Britain 228,000 people died. The United States lost as many as 675,000 people, Japan some 400,000. The south Pacific island of Western Samoa (modern-day Samoa) lost one-fifth of its population. Researchers estimate that in India alone, fatalities totaled between 12 and 17 million. Exact data in the number of deaths is elusive, but global mortality figures are estimated to have been between 10 and 20 percent of those who were infected.
In 1997 the samples taken by Johan Hultin from the woman found in the frozen mass grave in Brevig Mission added to scientists' knowledge as to how flu viruses mutate and spread. Drugs and improved public hygiene—in conjunction with international institutions such as the World Health Organization and national bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States—put the international community in a much better position to meet the challenges of a new outbreak. However, scientists know a lethal mutation could occur at any time, and a century on from the mother of all pandemics, its effects on a crowded, interconnected world would be devastating.
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