- RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
- 16 April 2026
Most of the individuals in a seventeenth-century-Switzerland burial site had performed strenuous manual labour and died before the age of 20.
Bodies being interred during the Great Plague of London of 1665, in a mid-1800s interpretation by artist John Franklin. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty
A plague outbreak fell hardest on low-income workers who could not afford to stay home even during an epidemic1. The disparities identified in human remains from the last plague outbreak recorded in Switzerland, in 1665–70, echo those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01210-7
