RE: Call for universal flu vaccine / Swine flu pandemic19 Sep 2020 15:29
Unfortunately, this influenza strain has all the attributes to cause a pandemic," he said. "It's easily taken up by human cells. It can be spread in an animal model — ferret to ferret through respiratory secretions. The ferrets that get infected have worse outcomes than seasonal influenza."
This unique strain, he added, "is more virulent and more infectious and has worse outcomes than human influenza A."
According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, pigs in China are increasingly becoming infected with an influenza virus dubbed G4. The virus is said to be a hybrid of strains found in European and Asian birds: the H1N1 strain that caused the 2009 pandemic, and a North American H1N1 strain that has genes from avian, human, and pig influenza viruses. The PNAS study states that 10.4% of "swine workers" had tested positive for G4.