Each year approximately 20% of the world’s population is infected by the influenza virus, with between 3 and 5 million cases of severe illness and up to 500,000 deaths across the globe. Approximately three times per century this annual epidemic grows further to become a pandemic. Some estimates suggest that the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic killed up to 100 million people.
By comparison, the following two pandemics were much less severe, with a death toll two to three times the mortality of the annual epidemics. Modern medical technology has been credited with reducing the impact of the latter two outbreaks, which occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, experts argue that another pandemic like 1918 could happen.
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