OREANDA-NEWS American scientists from Harvard Medical School headed by Jeremy Faust conducted a study comparing the number of deaths caused by the new coronavirus infection and the notorious Spanish flu of 1918-1920, which caused the pandemic.

The calculation for the coronavirus and the Spanish flu is based on excess deaths in New York in the worst two months during both pandemics. For example, at the peak of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1920 there were 287 deaths per 100 thousand people in New York, and during the COVID-19 outbreak in March and April 2020, 202 deaths per hundred thousand people were recorded in the city.

After this the American scientists compared the figures for the monthly mortality rate for the three years which were preceding the both pandemics. They found out that a hundred years ago, for every hundred thousand inhabitants, there were about a hundred deaths per month, which is twice as much today. The calculations made it possible for experts to conclude that the Spanish flu has tripled mortality, and COVID-19 has quadrupled.

The American scientists concluded that the new coronavirus infection leads to more deaths than the Spanish flu virus in 1918-1920.