The World Health Organisation has said it will “read carefully” a Chinese study on a new swine flu, which researchers noted has the potential to cause another pandemic.
While scientists say there is no imminent threat, the Chinese biologists who conducted the research warned “close monitoring in human populations, especially the workers in swine industry, should be urgently implemented”. The Chinese researchers analysed 30,000 nasal swabs taken from pigs at slaughterhouses between 2011 to 2018. They identified a G4 variant of the H1H1 ‘swine flu’ virus strain that caused a deadly pandemic in 2009.Pig farm workers also showed elevated levels of the virus in their blood, found the study’s authors, based at two Chinese universities, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the University of Nottingham.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news conference on Tuesday that the government was “closely following the developments in regard to this matter”.Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington, said the newly identified virus posed “no immediate threat to public health”.
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Source: Daily Trust - 🏆 13. / 51 Read more »