Deadly weapon: the worst viruses of the last decade

The coronavirus pandemic continues spreading all over the world, covering all continents except Antarctica. The virus was detected in more than 170 countries and territories, among which are Russia and Ukraine. Joy-pup editorial team monitors the situation and regularly publishes chronicles of coronavirus 2020.

The main symptoms of the disease caused by the COVID-19 virus are coughing, fever, difficult breathing. At risk are people with poor immunity, as well as the elderly and people with concurrent diseases, such as hypertension, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes mellitus, hepatic cirrhosis. However, the critical situation in the world confirms that everyone can have succumbed to the coronavirus and become its carrier as well. Doctors around the world advise not to leave the house unless necessary, regularly disinfect your hands with an antiseptic and wear a protective mask.

Let’s examine which terrible viruses of the last decade have also led to large-scale diseases and deaths of hundreds or thousands of people?

Coronavirus COVID-19

The already mentioned above virus COVID-19 was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, from where it spread to Asia, and then to Europe, America, Australia. To this date, Italy has suffered the most from the epidemic. More than 50,000 residents of Italy were infected and total deaths from coronavirus reach the number of 5,000 people. In terms of the number of deaths, China fell to second place – more than 3,200 deaths from coronavirus. More than 81,000 people are infected in China.

In total, more than 13 thousand deaths from coronavirus have been recorded in the world today. For the entire time of the epidemic, about 300 thousand people were infected and this amount increases by the day. In the meantime, more than 93 thousand patients successfully recovered. The five European “leaders” in the spread of coronavirus are Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland. The number of diseased people has doubled in the United States in three days.

Scientists are already predicting the spread of coronavirus in April, while people around the world are trying to stay at their homes because of the quarantine regime. Patrons donate money to fight the spread of infection, as well as to treat patients, purchase equipment for lung ventilation (IVL), and develop a vaccine.

Ebola Virus

An Ebola virus outbreak was first reported in 1976. Since then, the disease took the lives of 11 thousand people. The largest scale of infection was recorded in 2014-2016 in West Africa. More than 2,000 people died from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the summer of 2019.

In the natural environment, the carriers of the virus are fruit bats of the bloodline Pteropodidae. Ebola is transmitted from person to person through objects contaminated with body fluids (such as blood, excrement, vomiting). In 2015, the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine was developed, which helped save thousands of human lives.

Bird flu

The fact that the H5N1 flu virus can be transmitted from birds to humans was first reported in Hong Kong in 1997. Then 18 people have succumbed to the virus, 6 of whom died. The worst thing about this virus is its ability to mutate and combine with other strains of the flu. From 2003 to 2008, 361 cases of human infection were recorded, 227 of them were fatal. The last bird flu death was recorded in 2014 in Canada. As of today, a vaccine has been developed for this type of flu.

Swine Flu Virus

This is a conventional name for the human and animal disease caused by the H1N1 virus. An outbreak of this disease was recorded in 2009 in Mexico City, after which it spread around the world in the form of a pandemic. Swine flu cases were then confirmed in 168 countries. 414,000 people got infected, of which 5,000 died. The main cause of death is progressive viral pneumonia, which is antibiotics-insensitive.