Bollywood actress
Sonam Kapoor shared her concerns about a new type of
swine flu that has been discovered by researchers in China. Sharing an Instagram post about the same, the actress revealed that she had contracted a version of swine flu and that it was the most difficult thing she has gone through.
Sharing her thoughts and concerns about the same, she penned a note that read, “I’ve had a version of the swine flu...I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve gone through. I hope this isn’t true.”
According to the latest reports on AFP, researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, stated a study published in the US science journal PNAS.
Named G4, it is genetically descended from the
H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.
It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital, allowing them to isolate 179 swine flu viruses.
The majority were of a new kind which has been dominant among pigs since 2016.
According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 per cent of swine workers had already been infected.
The tests showed that as many as 4.4 per cent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.
The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human, which is a cause of great concern for the scientists.