The past decade's 5 deadliest viruses

CAIRO - 22 March 2020: For the past couple of months, COVID-19 has been causing panic around the world. Deaths are on the rise and the number of people and countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic increase by the minute.

Here's a sneak peek at the most dangerous viruses and epidemics of the past decade:

Swine Flu

The H1N1 swine flu epidemic spread in 2009. It was first discovered in Mexico in April of that year before it spread to many countries of the world.

According to the World Health Organization, swine flu is one of the most dangerous viruses because it has the ability to change rapidly, escaping the formation of antibodies in targeted individuals, where the virus modifies itself slightly every two to three years. When the infected bodies begin to create immunity to it, the virus mutates and manages to withstand the immune system, causing a pandemic sweeping the world every several years.

In June 2012, estimates were published through a study of a group of doctors, researchers, and organizations announcing the death of 284,000 people, including 201,000 deaths due to respiratory failures, and 83,000 deaths due to cardiovascular and blood vessels diseases, while the World Health Organization announced in the year 2010 that 18,000 people died as a result of the epidemic.

The number of deaths in the Arab region, as of January 31, 2010, in 22 countries reached 1014 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Ebola

In December 2013, a young boy named Emil Omono died in the village of Miliano, in Guinea. His death gained much more significance when Emil was named the first patient of what was later known to be the worst outbreak of Ebola in history.

The highly pathogenic Ebola virus has spread rapidly across Guinea, to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, to be known as the "Ebola virus in West Africa" outbreak. The outbreak almost caused the collapse of the economies of the three countries. During that year, about 6000 people died from the virus.

In 2018, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the virus caused the death of more than 2,200 people, out of nearly 3,300 confirmed cases.

Zika

Although Zika is not a deadly virus, the World Health Organization has identified the virus and the resulting fever as an epidemic, given its relationship to congenital malformation in newborns, a condition that came to be known as "microcephaly". It is caused by the transmission of infection from the pregnant mother to the fetus.

The virus has spread twice in the past decade, the first in French Polynesia in 2013 and the second in Brazil in 2015. In 2016, it was announced that there is no preventive treatment or vaccination against the Zika virus, which is spread by yellow fever mosquitoes.

In the second stage of the disease outbreak, the Zika virus began to circulate in April 2015. In early 2016, the spread of the virus reached its highest level in the history of the Americas before going viral in other countries of South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization declared a global emergency due to this virus.

Corona

In 2012, the coronavirus, which became known as the "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" (MERS) or "Acute Pneumonia Syndrome", appeared. It was initially called the New Coronavirus, just as with the current Wuhan virus in China.

As of July 2015, cases of coronavirus associated with respiratory syndrome in the Middle East have been reported in more than 21 countries.

According to the latest statistic published by the World Health Organization, on April 24, 2014, 254 confirmed cases were diagnosed in the world, of which 93 died.

New Coronavirus (COVID-19)

On December 31, 2019, the first suspected case of the new coronavirus or the emerging coronavirus, which became known as (nCoV-2019), was reported to the World Health Organization.

The first outbreak was at Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, before moving to Bangkok in Thailand, Tokyo in Japan and Seoul in South Korea, then in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong on the Chinese mainland, in addition to Hong Kong, Macau, Everett, Vietnam, and Singapore.

Later, infections were announced in Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan, the United States, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia before spreading to the entire world.

Documented symptoms included fever in 90 percent of cases, General weakness, dry cough at 80 percent of the reported cases. Shortness of breath was reported in 20 percent of the cases, and respiratory distress in 15 percent of cases.

According to Worldometer as of March 22, 2020 11:53 GMT, the number of COVID-19 cases reached 315,226 around the world. The number of deaths worldwide due to the pandemic is 13,582, and the number of recoveries is 95,892. The number of currently infected patients worldwide is 205,752.