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While COVID-19 Rages, Don't Forget About Pandemic Flu

Steve Baragona

   WASHINGTON - Don't panic, but there is another virus out there that
   could cause a pandemic.

   This one is an influenza strain circulating in pigs and their
   caretakers in China.

   It is not currently causing widespread illness, and it may never do so.
   But it has "all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,"
   according to the authors of a new study in the [1]Proceedings of the
   National Academy of Sciences.

   "This strain requires very close watching," said Andrew Pavia, chief of
   the pediatric infectious diseases division at the University of Utah,
   who was not involved with the research. "But at present, we just don't
   know what the pandemic potential is."

   The new strain contains genes from the flu virus that caused a pandemic
   in 2009. It infects human cells and spreads easily in lab tests.

   The strain has become dominant in Chinese pigs and has infected people.
   The study's authors tested workers at 15 hog farms in Hebei and
   Shandong provinces for the virus, as well as people living nearby. They
   found that about 10% of the workers and 4% of the locals had been
   exposed.

References

   1. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921186117

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