OXFORD: (Sep 16) Smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been eradicated worldwide. Researchers have now recovered fragments of ancient DNA belonging to the variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox, from the naturally mummified remains of two Indigenous people buried in northern Chile.
For centuries, smallpox caused devastating epidemics. Its severe form, variola major, killed around 30 per cent of those infected, although the rate varied between outbreaks and populations.
The first documented outbreak in the Americas occurred on the island of Hispaniola in 1518. During the 16th century, successive epidemics became a major contributor to the catastrophic loss of Indigenous life, amid the wider violence and disruption of European colonisation.
Source: PTI News
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