The Spanish flu is currently considered the worst pandemic in history. [Handout / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / AFP]
As the coronavirus epidemic spreads all over the world, with more than 134,000 cases of infection causing the death of 5,000 people according to one last report, back to the 10 worst pandemics in history.
THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS
The plague in Athens is said to be the first recorded pandemic in history. It touched ancient Greece from 430 to 426 BC. The population was then victim of a typhoid fever wave. A third of the city’s population, which numbered around 200,000, is said to have died.
THE ANTONINE PLAGUE
Antonine or galenic plague struck the Roman Empire at the end of the Antonine dynasty. It began in late 165 or early 166 in Mesopotamia and reached Rome in less than a year. It is probably the first smallpox epidemic in the West.
It would have made nearly 10 million deaths between 166 and 189.
THE PLAGUE OF JUSTINIAN
Justinian’s plague is named after the Emperor who reigned at that time. This epidemic was said to have started in Egypt in 541. Following the Mediterranean trade routes, it affected the Mediterranean coasts, including Italy. It killed an estimated 25 to 100 million people worldwide, one third of the population at the time. The epidemic has caused up to 10,000 deaths a day. Constantinople would have lost, in one summer, 40% of its population.
BLACK PLAGUE
From 1347 to 1353, the black plague would have caused between 25 to 34 million victims in Europe. Black plague is a bubonic infection, that is to say a bacterium which is transmitted to humans via the flea. It would have been propagated in particular because of the war but also the trade. The plague reappeared in the second half of the 19th century, killing almost 100 million people worldwide.
YELLOW FEVER
Yellow fever, also known as “vomito negro” (“black vomit”), appeared in tropical regions of the Americas where a large epidemic hit the Yucatan in Mexico in 1648, reports Southwest. This acute viral hemorrhagic disease is transmitted by infected mosquitoes.
Several waves of yellow fever affected the world in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. South America, including Venezuela and sub-Saharan Africa, is still affected by yellow fever today, according to the WHO.
CHOLERA
Cholera-morbus first appeared in India around 1826, then spread to Moscow and Russia in 1830, then to Poland and Finland. It touched Berlin in 1831, the British Isles in 1832 and finally France the same year. In six months, this epidemic which sowed panic and caused riots claimed more than 100,000 victims in France and more than a million in Europe.
THE SPANISH INFLUENZA
The Spanish flu pandemic appeared at the end of the First World War. It would have landed in Europe via American troops before contaminating the civilian population of Europe and the world in 1919. It would have affected between a quarter and a third of the world population. It has made between 25 and 50 million victims. It is considered to be the most devastating pandemic in history.
ASIAN INFLUENZA
Asian influenza (H2N2) appeared in China in 1956 before spreading around the world. The pandemic has claimed the lives of 1 to 4 million people, according to the WHO. The United States was particularly affected with approximately 70,000 victims.
THE HONG KONG INFLUENZA
The Asian flu strain evolved into H3N2 antigen and caused a new pandemic called the Honk-Kong flu from 1968. It affected Asia, the United States before arriving in Europe at the end of the year 1969. It caused the death of approximately one million people worldwide.
AIDS
The AIDS pandemic began in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the 1920s, before spreading around the world. HIV, which is transmitted from mother to child, through blood and sex, affects the immune system, preventing the body from defending itself. The first AIDS alert was given in 1981. Two years later, on May 20, 1983, the AIDS virus was discovered by the research team of the Pasteur Institute, led by Luc Montagnier. At the height of the epidemic in the 2000s, almost two million people died from the disease each year worldwide.
In 2018, 770,000 people died of AIDS worldwide, a third less than in 2010, according to the annual report of the UNAIDS. There is still no vaccine for HIV at this time, but antiretroviral therapy allows carriers to live with it. Since 1881, AIDS has claimed more than 35 million lives.
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