Researchers Find New Swine Flu in China
Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention a new type of Swine Flu capable of starting a pandemic.
A study published on 30th June 2020 in the US science journal PNAS, by the scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. They have discovered a new type of Swine Flu (H1N1). This type of virus is capable of triggering a pandemic. It has been named G4 and it has genetically descended from the Swine Flu that caused a pandemic in 2009. The Chinese scientists said that it possesses all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans. From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital.
The researchers then did experiments on many animals including on ferrets, which are used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans especially fever, coughing and sneezing. But G4 was the most infectious in ferrets.
Usually, when humans get infected with seasonal flu, they recover and their immunity becomes stronger. But according to researchers, this immunity does not protect against G4. Blood tests found that 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected. The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also may have been exposed. That means that the virus has already passed from animals to humans but the scientists' main worry is that there is no proof still that it can be passed from human to human. If it spreads from human to human it can spread all over the world. The researchers have said that we need to urgently monitor people working with pigs.
