Pigs in their pen on a farm outside Chengdu in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on August 2, 2005.
Peter Parks | AFP | fake pictures
Scientists have identified a new strain of pig-borne flu in China that they say has the potential to become a pandemic.
The new strain is descended from the type of flu, known as “swine flu,” which emerged in 2009 and caused the first global flu pandemic in 40 years.
The scientists published their peer-reviewed findings in the American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. They called the new flu strain, which they called “G4 EA H1N1”, a variation of swine flu and includes the “G4” genotype that has become predominant in swine populations since 2016.
As with swine flu, the new strain has been identified as having “all the essential characteristics of a possible pandemic virus.”
Scientists, who studied influenza viruses in pig populations between 2011 and 2018, found that around 10% of pig industry workers who tested in China had already been exposed to the virus, which they described as “concerning ” That rate increased among younger workers, ages 18 to 35, “indicating that the predominant G4 EA H1N1 virus has acquired increased human infectivity.”
“Such infectivity greatly increases the opportunity for adaptation of the virus in humans and raises concerns about the possible generation of pandemic viruses,” noted the scientists, who work at various Chinese universities and at the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
They recommended close monitoring of pig populations, and of anyone working with them.
“Control of the predominant G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the pig industry, must be implemented urgently,” they wrote.
“Pigs are intermediate hosts for the generation of the pandemic influenza virus. Therefore, routine surveillance of influenza viruses in pigs is a key measure to prevent the onset of the next pandemic influenza.”
While the “swine flu,” which first emerged in Mexico in 2009, is now considered one of a variety of seasonal flu viruses and is included in annual flu vaccines, the scientists said any pre-existing immunity of the population “does not provide protection against G4 viruses”.
However, they wanted to emphasize that the virus is not an immediate problem.
Professor Kin-Chow Chang, one of the scientists involved in the study and working at the University of Nottingham in the UK, told the BBC that “while this new virus is not an immediate problem … we should not Ignore It”.
“Right now we are distracted by the coronavirus, and with good reason. But we must not lose sight of the new potentially dangerous viruses.”
Current flu vaccines do not appear to protect against it, although they could possibly be adapted if necessary, the BBC reported. To carry out their research, scientists carried out influenza surveillance on pigs in 10 Chinese provinces between January 2011 and April 2018, and collected almost 30,000 nasal swabs taken from pigs slaughtered from slaughterhouses, as well as more than 1,000 swabs nasal or lung tissue from pigs reared with signs of respiratory disease
.
