Experts reassure public over risk of pandemic caused by swine flu
Chinese researchers have issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs, coming after the COVID-19, but disease control experts said the public should not overreact and hog farms have shown no signs of related disease.
Scientists from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans.
The study was published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.
Researchers collected samples between 2011 and 2018 among pigs in 10 Chinese provinces and regions, and found that the virus was prevalent in pigs since 2016. Some 10.4 percent of pig farm workers tested positive for antibodies against the virus, according to the paper.
“Controlling the prevailing G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the swine industry, should be urgently implemented,” Chinese researchers warned in the paper.
The findings triggered public concern over another pandemic like COVID-19 and whether the virus would exert an impact on the hog industry.
G4 includes sequence from a virus discovered in birds in Europe and Asia, as well as the one that caused the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which was a hybrid of human, swine and bird flu viruses.
Despite wide concerns, an expert on veterinary medicine close to the research team who requested anonymity told the Global Times that the new virus is not very different from other swine flu viruses that are prevalent in pigs, and it is preventable.
The new virus, considering it has a similar genetic sequence of the 2009 pig flu virus, has the potential to jump to humans. But the chance of human-to-human transmission is minor, the expert noted. Previous human infections with G4 were dead-end and did not cause human-tohuman transmission, research showed.
Yang Zhanqiu, a Wuhan-based virologist told the Global Times that the paper’s warning about human-to-human transmission is prudent but the public does not need to be overly concerned.
During the swine flu pandemic in 2009, scientists predicted it would infect over 600 million people worldwide but eventually some 60 million people got infected, media reported.