Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned Tuesday that the United States needs to keep its focus on a new strain of swine flu emerging from China that has the potential to become a pandemic, even when The United States is still recovering from a crisis. coronavirus outbreak that started there.
Fauci was asked at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Work and Pensions about a new strain of H1N1 that scientists identified and about which a study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Swine flu strain with ‘human pandemic potential’ found in more Chinese pigs, scientists say ‘
Fauci said the virus has not yet been shown to infect humans, but that it exhibits “rearrangement capabilities” and that when there is a new virus leading to a pandemic, it is due to mutations and / or gene rearrangement or exchange . .
“And they are seeing a virus in pigs … now that they have the characteristics of 2009 H1N1, from the original from 1918 [influenza] – that many of our influenza viruses have remnants of that, as well as segments of other hosts like pigs, “he explained.
“When all of them are mixed and contain some of the elements that can make it susceptible to human transmission, there is always the possibility that you may have another outbreak of swine flu like the one we had in 2009,” he said.
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“It is something that is still in the examination stage, it is not an immediate threat in which infections are seen, but it is something that we must monitor exactly as we did in 2009 with the appearance of swine flu,” he said, before adding that the virus is called G-4.
According to The New York Times, the new strain has been common on Chinese pig farms since 2016 and replicates in human airways, but without causing disease.
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“G4 viruses have all the essential characteristics of a candidate pandemic virus,” the study said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that between April 2009 and April 2010, there were 60.8 million cases, more than 274,000 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths in the United States due to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
