Coronavirus warning: How virus is spreading quicker than Spanish Flu – ‘It’s explosive!’

And now an influenza expert has exposed a horror statistic that shows the coronavirus will spread even quicker than the deadly Spanish Flu, which killed millions worldwide more than a century ago. John Barry, author of ’The Great Influenza’, explained that compared to the common strain of influenza, coronavirus is currently spreading at twice the rate of that flu. He predicts that the coronavirus, which has so far claimed the lives of thousands of people, will be “explosive” and that more people will get infected.

On Richard French Live in March, Mr Barry was asked about how reproductive the virus was and how this compared to the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Back then, the disease killed up to 50 million people, ravaging most of the world.

In response, Mr Barry said: “The reproductive number is how many people one sick person infects and right now it looks like it’s between two and 2.5 for the coronavirus.

“The 1918 virus had around 1.8 so regular influenza normally infects around 10 to 15 percent of the population at 1.28.

“This is approaching double that number so it’s quite explosive.”

Spanish Flu is a similar type of influenza to the coronavirus and experts predict it affected around 500 million globally.

At the time, this represented nearly 27 percent of the Earth’s population and has since been described as one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

Drawing comparisons, CNN asked Mr Barry in February what global authorities needed to do differently in order to control the outbreak better than 102 years ago.

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In 1918, countries such as the UK and US were embroiled in World War I.

Historians are often critical of nations like these as leaders failed to properly inform the public on the seriousness of the killer flu.

And Mr Barry admitted the most important thing leaders can do now is be honest about the true extent of the virus.

He said: “The most important thing is to tell the truth.

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“People in authority have to tell the truth if they expect anybody listening to them to do what they are advised to do.

“That did not happen in 1918 and as a result there was real panic, literally in the streets, and society almost began to break down.

“In fact, DINA, the University of Michigan Medical School, said that if this continues for a few more weeks, civilisation could literally disappear off the face of the Earth – that’s how bad it got.”

Earlier in the week, the World Health Organisation labelled the outbreak a pandemic.

On Friday morning, it reported that across the world there had been more than 125,288 cases of coronavirus.

Of these, at least 4,614 had perished.

Today, the first case of coronavirus was found in Kenya.

The country’s health minister Mutahi Kagwe said the patient had traveled to Kenya from the US and was diagnosed on March 12.

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