Since the nation crossed a grim milestone of one million covid deaths on May 13, 2022, we are examining how the toll from this pandemic compares to the influenza outbreak of 1918-19 in Cecil County.
COVID-19
The first COVID-19 case was identified in Cecil County on March 20, 2020, and the first virus-related death on March 31, 2020, according to the Health Department. Over the ensuing 26-months, the mortality count has ticked upward, the disease taking 259 lives as of May 20, 2022.1 This results in 2.51 COVID-19 deaths per 1,000 people since the county has a population of nearly 104,000..2
Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19
One-hundred-four years earlier another mysterious pathogen ripped across Cecil County. This time about 23,000 people lived here as reports of cases trickled in slowly in early September 1918. But the virus pummeled the county by the end of the month, taking a major deadly toll.
The first influenza cases involved 17-year-old Edith E. Gorrell on September 18, 1918, and her 15-year-old sister Irene on September 20. The young girls, the daughters of James Gorrell of North East, worked at a catsup canning factory in Newark that autumn. After becoming infected, they returned home to North East.3
Once the pathogen exploded locally, many residents became gravely ill, and an appalling number of deaths occurred. By the end of 1918, Cecil County had recorded 158 excess deaths, a 44 percent increase in mortality over the previous six-year average. But the virus kept Maryland in its clutches with another concentrated wave in the winter of 1919. Over that frosty season, the county reported 28 excess deaths, an increase of eight percent. This metric, excess deaths, measures how many lives were lost beyond what would have been expected.
During the time the novel pathogen raged across the county in 1918-19, a rough indicator is that of these 186 excess deaths 163 were directly attributed to influenza or pneumonia. This gave the county a virus-related death rate of about 7.1 per 1,000 people and an overall death rate of 22.4 for all causes in 1918 and 16.8 in 1919. For the six-year average before 1918, the annual mortality rate was 15.64
Comparison
While it is difficult to estimate the precise toll of the disease over 100-years-ago, the excess deaths above the expected mortality level provide one measure for assessing suddenly shiting health outcomes. The county recorded 163 excess deaths when the population stood at just over 23,000.
Comparing events that occurred more than a century apart has its perils. For example, the population of Cecil County in 1918 was about twenty-two percent of what it is today, meaning that influenza cut a much bigger, lethal swath through the county in a short, concentrated period of a few months. In terms of the raw mortality count, COVID-19 has taken more lives than the influenza pandemic did, but the population is far larger. From 1918 to 1919, there were 163 excess deaths. Thus far, in 2022, there have been 259 COVID-related deaths and the data on excess deaths has not been developed. In 1918-19, the death rate for influenza-related cases was about 7.08 cases per 1,000 people, while the rate for the current pandemic is 2.49.
| Measure | 1918-19 | 2020-Present |
| Excess Deaths | 186 | TBD |
| Virus-Related | 163 | 259 |
| Total Deaths | 902 | TBD |
| Virus-Related Death Rate pre/1000 | 7.08 | 2.49 |
| County Population | 23,009 | 103,905 |
- Cecil County Reports First Coronavrius Death, Delaware Business Journal, April 1, 2020[↩]
- U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimate[↩]
- Deaths, Cecil Democrat, September 28, 1918[↩]
- Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Maryland for the year ending December 31, 1918, Table 8, Birth Rates, Death Rates, and Rate of Increase in 1918, p 9[↩]