We can now look back and assess New Bedford's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. How does it compare to how the city handled the 1918 'Spanish Flu' pandemic?
Genetic analysis of lungs from people who died during the 1918 influenza pandemic reveal many similarities — and some surprising differences — between the two pandemics.
May 18, 2021 04:15 PM EDT
On the 27th of June 1918, Two young German soldiers-one was 18 years old, the other 17 years old- passed away in Berlin from a strain of new influenza that had begun earlier that year.
(Photo : Getty Images)
20th Century Pandemic
The lungs of the soldiers ended up in Berlin Museum of Medical History collection, where they rested, placed in formalin, for about 100 years. Now, scientists have made effort to sequence big parts of the virus that infected the two young soldiers, taking a brief look at the early days of the most catastrophic 20th-century pandemic. The partial genomes have some tantalizing hint that the well-known flu strain between the first and second waves of the pandemic may have adapted to humans.