CDC Warns That New Swine Flu Strain Has ‘Pandemic Potential’
Jason Koebler
Chicago Tribune
February 22, 2012
paper published Tuesday by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control suggests a new swine flu virus has the potential to cause an outbreak.
The A(H3N2)v swine flu strain that has infected at least 18 Americans since Sept. 2010 has shown the potential for human-to-human transmission. According to the paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the H3N2 strains “resemble viruses with pandemic potential.” Terrence Tumpey, one of the authors of the study, says the current seasonal flu vaccine won’t protect against this swine flu strain, although he says the CDC is working on creating a vaccine for swine flu variants such as the one he studied.
In November, the CDC suggested that “limited human-to-human transmission” of H3N2 had occurred in Iowa, but the most recent findings show that the virus is more easily transmissible than originally thought, leading the authors to warn that “swine-origin H3N2 viruses have the potential to cause additional human disease.” Since August, people in at least five states (Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) have caught the strain.
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