Jordan: Facts and Figures - January – December 2020 Format Pandemics and their impact Many people would agree that the last major pandemic to hit the world before COVID-19 was the Spanish flu of 1918, which reportedly infected 500 million people—one-third of the world’s population at the time—and left an estimated 50 million persons dead worldwide. Even though the world had become much more advanced in 2020 (when COVID-19 ravaged the globe) than it was in 1918, the virus that struck still dealt a tragic blow, infecting 96 million people and killing 2 million (as of January 20, 2021). It took the lives of many frontline health workers, destroyed economies, and threatened social fabrics.