No immediate threat of new swine flu pandemic, Chinese CDC says

Name: New type of swine flu found in China has human pandemic potential, researchers say
Uploaded: 2020-07-04T11:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: New type of swine flu found in China has human pandemic potential, researchers say

Centre seeks to assure the public after its director co-authors a paper calling for higher surveillance in the pig industry for G4 strain

Researchers say strain can bind to human cells and there is no pre-existing immunity among people

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Researchers in China and Britain have called for greater attention to be paid to the G4 swine flu strain. Photo: AP

Josephine Ma

Published: 7:30pm, 4 Jul 2020Updated: 3:28pm, 5 Jul 2020

A “new” strain of swine flu has pandemic potential but is not an immediate public health threat, according to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC issued the assessment on Friday night after a paper co-authored by Chinese and British scientists, including the centre’s director Gao Fu, called for heightened surveillance of the virus, called G4 EA H1N1, among pig industry workers and livestock.

“At this stage the G4 virus has not caused a rise in the risks of a pandemic compared to the past. The results also show that there are no imminent public health threats,” the CDC said.

“Reassortment and mutation of influenza viruses is common and they can cause a pandemic. At this moment there is no way to predict when, how or from where new influenza viruses will cause a pandemic.”

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New type of swine flu found in China has human pandemic potential, researchers say

In the paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 29, the researchers detailed the results of an extensive surveillance for swine influenza viruses between 2011 and 2018 in 10 provinces in China with large pig populations.