First mention of influenza appeared in weekly public health report
On Apr. 4, 1918, the first mention of influenza appeared in a weekly public health report. The report informed officials of 18 severe cases and three deaths in Haskell, Kansas. More than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas become ill with flu. Within a week the number of flu cases quintupled.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.
Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.
Note: In 2005, Jeffery Taubenberger, AH Reid, AE Krafft, Karen Bijwaard and Thomas Fanning published a report in Science that described the isolation of the genes from the deadly 1918 flu virus. The sequences were consistent with a novel H1N1 influenza A virus that belongs to the subgroup of strains that infect humans and swine, not the avian subgroup.
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Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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