Researchers revealed nearly three centuries of data showing repeated smallpox epidemics in London in a study published Monday in the open access journal PLOS One. With the help of his colleagues and undergraduate research assistants, Earn -- over the course of the last few years -- digitized 13,000 weekly smallpox mortality records. His team's goal was to make these records publicly available and enable scientists to analyze how patterns of disease spread in populations. The data spans 267 years, from 1664 to 1930, the last year in which there was more than one smallpox death in a single week. Implications for Covid-19This new study builds on Earn's previous work, which involved plotting centuries of data on epidemics such as cholera and the plague .

Source: CNN December 22, 2020 23:48 UTC