Friday, September 02, 2011

CIDRAP On Today’s Reassorted Swine Flu Story

 

 


# 5809

 

 

Robert Roos, News Editor for CIDRAP has an excellent summary of today’s big story about two recent infections from a previously unseen novel swine flu virus (see MMWR: Two Novel trH3N2 Flu Infections and MMWR: Swine-Origin Influenza A (H3N2) Virus Infection in Two Children).

 

Roos also includes some comments from Lyn Finelli, DrPH, chief of the surveillance and outbreak response team in the CDC's influenza division and Andrew T. Pavia, MD, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

 

 

Novel H3N2 swine flu viruses infected 2 children, CDC says

Robert Roos * News Editor

Sep 2, 2011 (CIDRAP News) – In separate instances, influenza A/H3N2 viruses circulating in swine picked up a gene from the pandemic 2009 H1N1 virus and recently infected two young children, one in Indiana and one in Pennsylvania, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

Both of the children recovered, though one was briefly hospitalized, and there is no sign that the viruses spread from the children to others, but any evidence of ongoing transmission would require a rapid response, the CDC said.

The agency also said one of the children had no direct contact with pigs, which suggests he caught it from another person. Both children are under age 5.

(Continue . . . )