New flu virus in China

Special Desk

While the world if struggling hard to find treatment and vaccine for COVID-19 the new comes that a new strain of flu that has the potential to become a pandemic has been found by Chinese scientists.

They said, it has emerged recently and is carried by pigs, but can infect humans too. The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak.

While it is not an immediate problem, they say, it has potential of being highly adapted to infect humans. Also people could have little or no immunity to the new virus.

An article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures to control the virus in pigs, and the close monitoring of swine industry workers, explains. A bad new strain of influenza is among the top disease threats that experts are watching for, even as the world attempts to bring to an end the current coronavirus pandemic.

The last pandemic flu the world encountered – the swine flu outbreak of 2009 that began in Mexico – was less deadly than initially feared, largely because many older people had some immunity to it, probably because of its similarity to other flu viruses that had circulated years before.

The new flu strain that has been identified in China is similar to 2009 swine flu, but with some new changes. So far, it hasn’t posed a big threat, but Prof Kin-Chow Chang and colleagues who have been studying it, say it is one to keep an eye on.

The virus, which the researchers call G4 EA H1N1, can grow and multiply in the cells that line the human airways. They found evidence of recent infection starting in people who worked in abattoirs and the swine industry in China. Current flu vaccines do not appear to protect against it.