According to a new study published in JAMA Network Open, other people in New York died of COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic at approximately the same rate as the Spanish flu in 1918. Researchers focused on two consistent 61-day periods: March 11 to May 11 this year and 61 days in October and November 1918, when the influenza epidemic was at its peak. The study found that the peak of the 1918 pandemic, 287 consisting of 100,000 New Yorkers died each month, while for this year’s pandemic, 202 out of every 100,000 New Yorkers died according to the month. The Spanish flu, which was nicknamed when King Alfonse XIII of Spain contracted and survived, ended up killing some 50 million people internationally and 675,000 in the United States alone. New York, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been able to flatten the curve.
The pandemic is believed to have spread internationally from Wuhan, China. But now Chinese officials are concerned that the virus will return to their countries with shipments of frozen products from countries like Brazil and Ecuador, where the plague is ravaging. Inspectors from 3 Chinese cities reported detecting COVID-19 in imported frozen foods over a four-day period.
Corky Siemaszko is senior editor of NBC News Digital.
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