Hong Kong Flu
Also known as the 1968 flu pandemic, this outbreak killed an estimated 1 million people across the world. It all started on the 13th of July 1968, and by the end of the month, it had reached Singapore and Vietnam. By September, it had reached India, northern Australia, the Philippines and Europe.
The culprit? An H3N2 strain of the Influenza A virus. The process of antigenic shift which causes genes from multiple subtypes to rearrange themselves in order to form a new virus
But many experts claim that the outbreak could have been avoided, especially after coming off the back of the 1957 Asian Flu. But despite this outbreak’s death toll, proper measures had not been taken, causing the Hong Kong Flu to spread exponentially.
