By Nov. 18, 1918, with New Orleans’s business and schools once again back to their normal operations, local U.S. Public Health Service representative Dr. Gustave M. Corput declared the epidemic over. New Orleans’s epidemic was a devastating one. Between October 1918 and April 1919, the city experienced a staggering 54,089 cases of influenza.

Of these, 3,489 died – a case fatality rate of 6.5%, and an excess death rate of 734 per 100,000. Only Pittsburgh (806) and Philadelphia (748) – the two cities with the worst epidemics in the nation – had higher death rates.