BOOK REVIEW : The Pandemic Century: A History of Global Contagion from the Spanish Flu to COVID-19

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 11 March 2020. By the end of September 2020, more than one million people had died of the disease. Mark Honigsbaum has written a timely account of infectious disease outbreaks over the last 100 years including the current Covid-19 pandemic. The first half of the 20th century witnessed outbreaks of Spanish influenza, plague and psittacosis. The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people. Legionnaires disease and AIDS appeared in the second half of the 20th century. The 21st century saw the emergence of SARS, Ebola, Zika and COVID-19.