H1n1 vs Covid-19: symptoms, difference and impact
A decade ago, the H1N1 virus infected an estimated 24% of the global population during a pandemic that lasted 19 months. So how much deadlier is Covid-19?
In January 2009 a novel strain of the H1N1 virus (labelled H1N1-pdm09 which became more popularly known as Swine Flu) emerged, creating a pandemic that lasted 19 months and that estimates suggest may have been linked to up to half a million fatalities worldwide. Much like the ongoing Covid-19 gloal pandemic, there was no immunity or available vaccine at the start of the outbreak, which caused widespread panic after it was found to be a similar strain of the virus to the original cause of the Spanish Flu in 1918.
There has been a lot of debate in the US about how the administration of Donald Trump has handled the Covid-19 pandemic in the country compared to the response of Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden, to the 2009 outbreak, with many observers asking if they are genuinely comparable.
H1N1 symptoms
The first the case of H1N1 was detected in Mexico, after which the virus went on to infect 24 percent of the world’s population. While there is no definitive figure, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 151,700-575,400 people worldwide died from H1N1-related illnesses during the first year the virus circulated. In the United States alone, the CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases, with 12,469 deaths. Unlike the coronavirus, the disease was more deadly for younger demographics. It was estimated that 80 percent of H1N1 victims worldwide were younger than 65 years of age.
The CDC in 2010 noted the symptoms of H1N1 as being: fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Many of the symptoms of Covid-19 are similar and both can also produce respiratory symptoms, although H1N1 does not necessarily present fever as an accompanying symptom.
After a vaccine was made available in December, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) was finally able to announce the end of the pandemic ten months later in August 2010. From that date, health experts had warned that a new global pandemic would inevitably emerge in the not-so-distant future. And their predictions have finally become a reality a decade later as the world struggles to deal with the unprecedented social, health and economic fallout of the ongogin coronavirus pandemic.
How does H1N1 compare to Covid-19?
The WHO is still a long way off announcing an end to the current coronavirus crisis as the world scrambles to find a vaccine for a disease that has already cost well over the number of fatalities caused by H1N1. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said that a return to the "new normal" long touted as an end to the global pandemic is not on the short-term horizon.
As of 23 July, 2020, there were over 15 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 globally, with over 625,000 deaths. At the end of the 2009-10 Swine Flu pandemic, confirmed cases and deaths from H1N1 stood at 1.6 million and 18,448, respectively.