As we note from history, deadly pandemics have always been inherent to human civilizations. In the past two centuries alone, the world has seen a total of eight major pandemics. In the 20th century three outbreaks recorded as global pandemic: the historic ‘Spanish Influenza’ of 1918, (killed over 100 Million people): the ‘Asian flu’ of 1957 (killed 1.1 million people) and the ‘Hong Kong flu’ of 1968 (killed 1 million people worldwide)
The 21st century has seen five pandemic outbreaks: N1H1 in 2009 (‘575,400 killed), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome –SARS (with 7 to 17% fatality rate) in 2002, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome – MERS (with 35% fatality rate) in 2012, and Ebola which peaked in 2013-14 (with 25% to 90% fatality rate).
Currently the world is struggling with the fifth pandemic in 21st century, the coronavirus pandemic- COVID-19.
This infographic piece depicts a timeline note on COVID-19 since the first case was confirmed in late December 2019 to date.
Habtamu Girma Demiessie (ሀብታሙ ግርማ ደምሴ) 