The Hong Kong flu, also known as the 1968 flu pandemic, was a flu pandemic whose outbreak in 1968 and 1969 killed between one and four million people globally. It is among the deadliest pandemics in history, and was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus. The virus was descended from H2N2 (which caused the Asian flu pandemic in 1957–1958) through antigenic shift, a genetic process in which genes from multiple subtypes are reassorted to form a new virus.
The first recorded instance of the outbreak appeared on 13 July 1968 in British Hong Kong. It has been speculated that the outbreak began in mainland China before it spread to Hong Kong; On 11 July, before the outbreak in the colony was first noted, the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported an outbreak of respiratory illness in Guangdong Province, and the next day, The Times issued a similar report of an epidemic in southeastern China. Later reporting suggested that the flu had spread from the central provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Shanxi, which had experienced epidemics in the spring. However, due to a lack of etiological information on the outbreak and a strained relationship between Chinese health authorities and those in other countries at the time, it cannot be ascertained whether the Hong Kong virus was to blame.
The outbreak in Hong Kong, where the population density was reached its maximum intensity in two weeks. The outbreak lasted around six weeks, affecting about 15% of the population (some 500,000 people infected), but the mortality rate was low and the clinical symptoms were mild.
There were two waves of the flu in mainland China, one between July–September in 1968 and the other between June–December in 1970. The reported data were very limited due to the Cultural Revolution, but retrospective analysis of flu activity between 1968 and 1992 shows that flu infection was the most serious in 1968, implying that most areas in China were affected at the time.
Despite the lethality of the 1957–1958 pandemic in China, little improvement had been made regarding the handling of such epidemics.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
This is an introductory course on Elliptic Partial Differential Equations. The course will cover the theory of both classical and generalized (weak) solutions of elliptic PDEs.
This course is an introduction to the theory of Riemann surfaces. Riemann surfaces naturally appear is mathematics in many different ways: as a result of analytic continuation, as quotients of complex
The students gain an in-depth knowledge of several current and emerging areas of theoretical computer science. The course familiarizes them with advanced techniques, and develops an understanding of f
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms begin from one to four days after exposure to the virus (typically two days) and last for about 2–8 days. Diarrhea and vomiting can occur, particularly in children. Influenza may progress to pneumonia, which can be caused by the virus or by a subsequent bacterial infection.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1/swine flu/influenza virus and declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) from June 2009 to August 2010, is the third recent flu pandemic involving the H1N1 virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic and the second being the 1977 Russian flu). The first two cases were discovered independently in the United States in April 2009. The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses which further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu".
The 1957–1958 Asian flu pandemic was a global pandemic of influenza A virus subtype H2N2 that originated in Guizhou in Southern China. The number of excess deaths caused by the pandemic is estimated to be 1–4 million around the world (1957–1958 and probably beyond), making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. A decade later, a reassorted viral strain H3N2 further caused the Hong Kong flu pandemic (1968–1969). The first cases were reported in Guizhou of southern China, in 1956 or in early 1957.
Learn to optimize on smooth, nonlinear spaces: Join us to build your foundations (starting at "what is a manifold?") and confidently implement your first algorithm (Riemannian gradient descent).
Covers the proof of the Bourgain's ARV Theorem, focusing on the finite set of points in a semi-metric space and the application of the ARV algorithm to find the sparsest cut in a graph.
Introduces the Naive Bayes classifier, covering independence assumptions, conditional probabilities, and applications in document classification and medical diagnosis.
, ,
Horizontal gene transfer can trigger rapid shifts in bacterial evolution. Driven by a variety of mobile genetic elements—in particular bacteriophages and plasmids—the ability to share genes within and across species underpins the exceptional adaptability o ...
2022
, ,
Influenza viruses are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. These air-borne pathogens are able to cross the species barrier, leading to regular seasonal epidemics and sporadic pandemics. Influenza viruses also possess a high genetic variabi ...
2021
Cholera pandemics have been affecting humankind for centuries and are still considered a major public health problem, especially in regions around the world with poor access to clean water and sanitation. Cholera pandemics are caused by a specific lineage ...