Russian Flu Notes, by Prof. Fleury

by Prof. Hervé Fleury, MD-PhD | Ventum Biotech Scientific Board Member

Between 1889 and 1891, a pandemic attributed to influenza and known as the “Russian flu” was observed in Russia (Bukhara, Tomsk, Ukraine, Black Sea, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg) then Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Vienna before spreading throughout continental Europe (including France), England then Boston and New York in the US, Canada, Central and South America; Persia, Egypt and British India (Bombay, Calcutta) will be concerned in a second phase as well as Southeast Asia, Africa (South Africa), Australia and New Zealand. This pandemic apparently followed the trade routes of the time, particularly by trains and boats. There was no Airbus A380 yet... Estimate  says this pandemic has resulted in at least one million deaths.

The flu virus was not yet known (it will be in the 30s) and the flu was only a clinical diagnosis; however, there were similarities in the description of clinical cases (pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and neurological damage) with what is observed during a SARS CoV2 (COVID 19) infection and in particular the loss of taste and smell.

However, by analyzing the genome of one of the four human coronaviruses known to circulate in winter in children and devoid of severity, a Belgian team from Leuven showed that the human virus OC43 was very close to a bovine coronavirus.

The phylogenetic tree established from the genomic sequences of viruses shows the proximity of OC43 and BCoV (bovine coronavirus)

The team then calculated by molecular clock (which takes into account the appearance on an annual rate of mutations in the genome) the time that would separate the bovine virus on the one hand from OC43  on the other hand, in the event of an emergence of OC43 from the  bovine virus. Their calculations show that this emergence would have taken place around 1890. 

Thus, and according to the hypothesis of Belgian and German scientists, the Russian flu could have in fact been a coronavirus pandemic emerging from cattle to humans at the end of the 19th century; the virus as it subsided would have become the OC43 now circulating in winter in our temperate countries.  Obviously, we all ask ourselves the fundamental question:  will omicron be the 5th endemic coronavirus circulating especially in winter like the other four childhood coronaviruses?  The next developments in the SARS CoV 2 pandemic will probably provide us with the answer.

References:

What we can learn from the dynamics of the 1889 ‘Russian flu’ pandemic for the future trajectory of COVID-19 Harald Brüssow Microb Biotechnol. 2021

Clinical evidence that the pandemic from 1889 to 1891 commonly called the Russian flu might have been an earlier coronavirus pandemic Harald Brüssow, Lutz Brüssow 

Complete Genomic Sequence of Human Coronavirus OC43: Molecular

Clock Analysis Suggests a Relatively Recent Zoonotic Coronavirus Transmission Event  Vijgen et coll. J Virol 2005

Transmissibility and geographic spread of the 1889 influenza pandemic  Valleron et coll. PNAS 2010