Swine flu revives memories of 1918 pandemic

The swine flu has been compared to the 1918 'Spanish flu' pandemic which swept across the world. Photo / AP

Swine flu concerns have revived memories of one of last century's deadliest pandemics.

The Spanish flu, from March 1918 to June 1920, was caused by the Influenza A strain of subtype H1N1, and swept across the world, reaching the Arctic and Pacific Islands and claiming between 20 million and 100 million lives.

The death toll was more than double that of World War 1.

Like the swine flu, American Scientific.com suggests the Spanish flu leapt hosts from animals to humans.

Telegraph.co.uk says the flu was so severe, priests in America took carts through towns and villages, calling for families to bring out their dead.

In the United States around 28 per cent of the population suffered from the flu and 500,000 to 675,000 died. Britain lost close to 250,000 lives.

In Australia 12,000 people died while Fiji lost 14 per cent of its population in just a fortnight.

The high death toll was caused by a high infection rate, the severity of symptoms and misdiagnose. Doctors often thought it to be dengue fever, cholera or typhoid.

Later in the 20th century there were other, less serious, influenza pandemics.

In 1957 the Asian flu hit the elderly hard, killing nearly 70,000 in the United States alone.

Between September 1968 and March 1969 the Hong Kong flu swept through Asia and into the West, killing 33,000. In comparison the 1997 'bird flu' claimed just a few hundred lives.

Like the swine flu the 2003 SARS virus, which attacked the human respiratory system, was also compared to the 1918 pandemic. But medical advances meant there were fewer than 1000 deaths.

According to Professor Roy Anderson, who carried out the first detailed analysis of the spread of the virus in Hong Kong, the virus was deadly but not as highly transferable as other pandemic causing viruses of the 20th century.

- NZ HERALD STAFF