Pandemics have been creating horrifying experiences by disturbing the normal functioning of societies for years. Nowadays, even after technological advancement, they continue to cause hazardous situations in our lives. Due to the outbreak of coronavirus, people all over the world have to live their life in panic. Scientists and medical experts are compelled to come out of their comfort level and make efforts day and night to find a suitable vaccine to restrain the spread of the virus.

In a way to find the suitable solution, researchers have been comparing COVID-19 with other major pandemics several times, especially swine flu. Most of the characteristics of both viruses match in terms of diagnoses and symptoms, yet there are lots of differences. Let’s check what those are!

What is Swine flu?

Swine flu created the greatest havoc and serious panics among people in various parts of the world before COVID-19. This novel influenza virus rolled in the spring season of 2009. In contrast, a new strain of virus Covid-19 is a novel coronavirus that was never identified in humans before.  

Swine flu was detected in the US as a fusion of flu genes that hasn’t been previously seen in people or animals before. After some time, it was identified just like a strain of another seasonal influenza. 

How is Covid-19 different from Swine flu?

Swine flu outbreak in 2009 was the second H1N1 pandemic in the world after the 1918 spanish flu (the most fatal pandemics in history).  Covid-19 is a coronavirus that was never detected in humans before. Also, the death rate of Covid-19 is much higher than the swine flu.

Coronavirus severely affects old age people and people with prior medical conditions, however Swine flu majorly affected youths and children. 

More than 60.8 million people got infected by swine flu, comparatively the number of infections and death counts are much higher in case of coronavirus.

Covid-19 and Swine flu- Signs and Symptoms

Both diseases differ from one another, yet they deliver the same symptoms. Fever, sore throat, fatigue and body ache are a few symptoms of swine flu. 

The most common symptoms of Covid-19 are fever, dry cough, fatigue, sore throat, loss of smell or taste, headache, etc.

Covid-19 and Swine flu: Diagnosis

Diagnosis of both swine flu and covid-19 is done with the aid of nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab. Other than this, rapid tests for both diseases can deliver results within hours.

Covid-19 and swine flu: Vaccine and treatments

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H1N1 flu is treated with flu vaccines and antiviral medications. There have been no major successes in developing a clinically approved vaccine for Covid-19.

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As the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc across the world, scientists and researchers across the world are making great strides in developing a vaccine to combat the spread of the highly infectious disease. Currently, there are more than 160 vaccine candidates in different stages of clinical trials and 32 vaccines have already reached the crucial human trials phase. With more than 22 million coronavirus cases across the world, a vaccine fit for human use remains our biggest hope in containing the novel coronavirus.

India, which reported more than 12 lakhs COVID-19 cases in the month of August is already developing two indigenous coronavirus vaccines, namely COVAXIN and ZyCoV-D.

As of now, the country is hopeful that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University’s Jenner Insititute might the first coronavirus to be available for Indians by the end of 2020. The vaccine candidate backed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical AstraZeneca will be launched under the brand name COVISHIELD in India.

The British Pharma giant AstraZeneca has tied up with the Pune-based Serum Institute of India to produce a billion doses for low-income nations including India. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had already given the go-ahead to conduct Phase II/III trial of Oxford vaccine in India. The trials are being conducted in 17 selected sites across India on 1600 volunteers, including KEM and Nair Hospitals of Mumbai.

Given that Oxford’s COVID vaccine trials are already in advanced stages in India and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila’s Zycov D are only in the early phases of human trials, India is hopeful that Oxford’s vaccine could be the first COVID-19 shot given to Indians.

Read Also: VACCINE BY YEAR-END : HARSHVARDHAN

It should be noted that clinical trials of India’s locally produced vaccine ‘Covaxin’ and ‘Zycov D’ have been fast-tracked and both the vaccine candidates are looking to complete their human trials by the end of 2020. This would essentially mean that a homegrown coronavirus vaccine may be pushed out in public circulation by the first quarter of 2021, as per the Health Minister of India.

He further stated that there a possibility that India’s first coronavirus vaccine ‘COVAXIN’ could be made available by the end of the year. Speaking to HT, Dr Harsh Vardhan also noted that since Serum Institute of India has already commenced the late-stage trials of Oxford’s vaccine, he was hopeful that India might get it by year-end.

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For several days now, Bihar had been showing signs of a big surge in its novel Coronavirus cases. On Thursday, the state reported 380 cases, which was nearly 25 per cent of its entire caseload till now. With close to 2,000 cases now, more than half of which has been discovered in just last one week, Bihar is fast developing into the next trouble state.

At the start of this month, Bihar had less than 450 cases. As migrants started flowing in following an easing of lockdown restrictions from May 4, Bihar’s cases started rising rapidly. Most of the new cases being detected in the state were amongst those who were returning to their hometowns from their workplaces in other parts of the country. Even now, the migrant workers comprise more than half of Bihar’s total cases.

Interestingly, Bihar’s growth rate had shot up after it had crossed the 100-figure mark around April 20. But that was mainly because of a low caseload. And it had slowed down considerably in the week before the migrant workers started coming in.

As of now, Bihar has a seven-day average growth rate of 10.32 per cent, and a doubling time of less than seven days. The national doubling time of cases is 13.45 days right now.

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