After COVID-19, Now Swine Flu That Can Affect Humans & With 'Pandemic Potential' Found In China
The entire world is struggling due to the COVID-19 outbreak, which is believed to have originated in the wet markets of Wuhan, China in 2019.Even while it is unclear if and when the Chinese-origin virus will be contained, there is more bad news coming from the country.?
Researchers in China have reportedly discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering another pandemic.According to a study published in the US science journal PNAS the new virus has been named as G4, and it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009, but with some new changes.?
It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital, allowing them to isolate 179 swine flu viruses.?
The majority were of a new kind which has been dominant among pigs since 2016.The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans principally fever, coughing and sneezing.?
G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.?
According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 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 appeared to have been exposed.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 "all the hallmarks" of being highly adapted to infect humans and needs close monitoring."It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.?
"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.
