Between 30% and 40% of people who worked or lived in confined areas, such as schools, barracks and government buildings, became infected. The illness struck the king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, along with leading politicians. Related: World War I: The science of communications Within two weeks of the report, more than 100,000 people had become infected with the flu.

The epidemic is of a mild nature, no deaths having been reported,' according to Henry Davies' book 'The Spanish Flu,' (Henry Holt & Co., 2000). As a result, people falsely believed the illness was specific to Spain, and the name 'Spanish flu' stuck.Įven in late Spring 1918, a Spanish news service sent word to Reuters' London office informing the news agency that 'a strange form of disease of epidemic character has appeared in Madrid. Spain was a neutral nation during the war and did not enforce strict censorship of its press, which could therefore freely publish early accounts of the illness.

Spain was one of the earliest countries where the epidemic was identified, but historians believe this was likely a result of wartime censorship. By the time the laborers arrived in northern France in early 1918, many were sick, and hundreds were soon dying. At the time, because of racial stereotypes, their illness was blamed on 'Chinese laziness' and Canadian doctors did not take the workers' symptoms seriously. Humphries explains that in one count of 25,000 Chinese laborers in 1918, some 3,000 ended their Canadian journey in medical quarantine. In all, over 90,000 workers were mobilized to the Western Front.

There, they were required to dig trenches, unload trains, lay tracks, build roads and repair damaged tanks. They spent six days in sealed train containers as they were transported across the country before continuing to France. The laborers were mostly farm workers from remote parts of rural China, according to Mark Humphries' book 'The Last Plague' (University of Toronto Press, 2013). Previously undiscovered records linked the flu to the transportation of Chinese laborers, the Chinese Labour Corps, across Canada in 19. In 2014, a new theory about the origins of the virus suggested that it first emerged in China, National Geographic reported.

Spanish Influenza by Ken Rossignol