Tracking pandemics through history

02:42

We've been able to trace the pandemic's rapid spread across the world. What's less clear is how much longer this will go on, especially as the coronavirus mutates. Still, we can look to history for some answers. CGTN's Gerald Tan explains.

With more COVID-19 vaccines becoming available, many people are itching to know: When will the pandemic end, and how?

There's no predicting the future; but a review of past pandemics could offer vital clues. Here's The Gist.

We start way, way back in the 14th Century with Bubonic Plague. Also referred to as The Black Death, it peaked in Europe in the mid-1300s and took an estimated 25 million lives over five years.

One Venetian policy to curb the plague kept sailors arriving into port cities on their ships for 40 days - or a ‘quarantena’ in Italian. Sound familiar? You guessed it, that's the origin of the practice we today call a ‘quarantine’.

Let's speed things along to something more recent: the 1918 flu pandemic. Over three years, the virus infected some 500 million people - that was one of every three humans on earth. Eventually, its spread slowed through a combination of developed immunity - and mutations that became much less deadly over time.

In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS raced across more than two dozen countries. But aggressive containment measures managed to limit infections to just over eight-thousand cases. Fewer than 800 people died.

And then there was the swine flu in 2009. That pandemic officially lasted for 14 months and was estimated to have infected at least 20-percent of the global population. The development of a vaccine against the virus appeared to help to vanquish it.

Which brings us to the current coronavirus pandemic. To end outbreaks, officials are banking on all those methods: quarantine, containment, immunity and vaccines.

"The arrival of vaccine is a moment of great hope. But it potentially also is a moment where we lose concentration. So, we need to adapt our behavior carefully, systematically, and we need to be very careful when exiting public health and social measures," said Michael Ryan, emergencies director of the World Health Organization.

In the U.S., the worst-hit nation, the government says vaccines for every adult will become available by May.

Yet, vaccination programs vary greatly across the globe, as do efforts to stamp out the disease.

In China, for instance, life is largely back to normal. So, too, in New Zealand and Australia.

But the global pandemic is only truly over once every nation brings COVID-19 under control. And now, you have The Gist.

Check out

The China Report

, our new weekly newsletter.Subscribe here!