MUTATE: New Swine Flu Virus, H3N2v, Infects 12 People in 5 States

USNEWS

The days of medical masks at airports and widespread panic may be coming back—that’s because at least 12 humans are believed to have been infected with a new strain of swine flu that’s not covered by this season’s vaccine.

The new swine flu strain, H3N2v, has shown at least some potential for human-to-human transmission in those 12 individuals, which makes it especially dangerous. Between 2009 and mid-2010, more than 17,000 people died worldwide from the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, leading the World Health Organization to call the strain a pandemic.

The 12 people with the new swine flu strain live in Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Officials for the Centers for Disease Control say the sample size of H3N2 infections is too small to know whether it will pose a threat to the population at large. Read

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Posted by hive on Jan 12 2012. Filed under Breaking, Science and Nature, Tip Of The Spear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry