Covid 2.0: Pandemic lessons India should have taken from second influenza wave of 1918
Years after the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918-20, it was estimated that one-third to half the Indian population was infected and 10-20 million people, then 3-6 per cent of the population, had died. The major damage was caused in a short period from June 1918 to early 1919. The second wave of the pandemic lasted for less than three months mid-September to early December of 1918 - but was most devastating.
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UPDATED: April 15, 2021 23:54 IST
India is in the middle of the second Covid wave, which is turning out to be more dangerous than the first. (Photo credit: PTI)
Muzaffar Ali in conversation with Professor Fatmi.
Allahabad has been home to a large community of Anglo-Indians since the time of British colonial rule. Though many members migrated to Australia and the United Kingdom sometime in the 1970s, the community still has sizeable presence in the city. My teaching job at the Boys’ High School connected me to this community and their delectable cuisine: a mixture of Indian and British culinary heritage. I discovered the Goan dish vindaloo, Christmas cakes baked at Bushy’s, and homemade mustard dips. Bushy’s, a bakery run by a Muslim family since 1963, still bakes in traditional wood-fired ovens. It is the only traditional bakery in Allahabad and, come Christmas, all Christian families book a slot at Bushy’s, lining up with their cake batter loaded with dry fruits soaked in rum.
Lessons from a century-old pandemic for current India March 4, 2021, 8:57 PM IST
Shashank Tripathi is a Virologist and Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Cell Biology in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Abhijith Biji is an undergraduate student in his lab. LESS. MORE
The history teaches lessons to implement in the present for a better future. An overlooked chapter in India’s history is the rampage of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Caused by a highly pathogenic strain of influenza virus, it took an estimated 12-20 million lives in India, which was ~6% of her population at that time. Limited primary information available from the Annual Report of the Sanitary Commission of India, and accounts written by Dr. Thomas P Herriot are the only window to 1918, which gives a first-person view of the horrors unleashed in India. While the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs and flows in different regions of the country, there is valuable lost knowledge and lessons from th