We’ve had other outbreaks this century. What makes the coronavirus pandemic different?
The world is not unfamiliar with outbreaks of deadly viruses.
There have been several in the 21s Century — including the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 and the H1N1 pandemic, also known as the swine flu, of 2009-2010.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
“It’s the first time the WHO has called an outbreak a pandemic since the H1N1 swine flu in 2009,” NPR reported.
What do SARS, H1N1 and coronavirus have in common?
SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Disease, and COVID-19 are respiratory diseases caused by coronavirus, albeit different strands, ABC News reported. H1N1, though also a respiratory illness, was a strain of influenza.
According to ABC, all three likely originated from a common source: animals.
SARS and COVID-19 are believed to have come from bats while the influenza virus that caused H1N1 likely came from a pig, the media outlet reported.
They also share similar flu-like symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath for COVID-19; fever, headache, fatigue for H1N1; and fever, headache, shakes for SARS.
There have been no known cases of SARS since 2004, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
How do they differ?
SARS:
More than 8,000 people in 29 countries were infected with SARS during the 2003 outbreak, Business Insider reported, and 774 people died.
There were only eight confirmed cases in the United States, none of whom died, according to McClatchy News.
TIME reported it did not reach pandemic status.
H1N1:
Six years later, H1N1 took the globe by storm with between 700 million and 1.4 billion cases, Business Insider reported. But it had a fairly low mortality rate of .02 percent.
SARS, by comparison, had a mortality rate of 9.6 percent, according Business Insider.
When WHO declared a global pandemic of H1N1, it was more a “reflection of the spread of the new H1N1 virus” than an indicator of “the severity of illness caused by the virus,” the CDC said.
“At the time, more than 70 countries had reported cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection and there were ongoing community level outbreaks of novel H1N1 in multiple parts of the world,” according to the CDC’s historical record.
COVID-19:
As of Thursday, there were more than 127,000 cases globally and 4,718 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
NPR reported there have been cases in at least 114 countries.
The mortality rate for COVID-19 “appears higher than for influenza,” WHO said in a report on March 6. Current data indicates the mortality ratio — meaning the number of deaths divided by the number of reported cases — will be between 3 and 4 percent, according to the report.
The mortality rate will likely be lower than the ratio, WHO said.
COVID-19 is also “more widespread than SARS,” Business Insider reported.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 2:29 PM with the headline "We’ve had other outbreaks this century. What makes the coronavirus pandemic different?."
