Roughly half a million Chinese living in Hebei Province, a province in northern China that surrounds Beijing are under lockdown, but in an effort to try to convey just how prepared Chinese public health officials are for another outbreak they've warned every English-language media outlet that will listen that officials have identified another potentially pandemic-quality flu pathogen.
According to the BBC, Chinese scientists have identified a new strain of flu that has "The potential to become a pandemic".
In theory, a flu pandemic could occur at any time, but they are still rare events.
Pandemics happen if a new strain emerges that can easily spread from person to person.
Although flu viruses are constantly changing - which is why the flu vaccine also needs to change regularly to keep up - they do not usually go pandemic.
Prof James Wood, head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said the work "Comes as a salutary reminder" that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of pathogens, and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses.
WHO SPOKESMAN SAYS CHINA STUDY ON NEW VIRUS IN PIGS SHOWS "WE CANNOT LET OUT GUARD DOWN" ON INFLUENZA DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC. But before we get carried away speculating about this new pandemic, how about we first figure out how things went so badly wrong during the early days of the last one?
According to the BBC, Chinese scientists have identified a new strain of flu that has "The potential to become a pandemic".
In theory, a flu pandemic could occur at any time, but they are still rare events.
Pandemics happen if a new strain emerges that can easily spread from person to person.
Although flu viruses are constantly changing - which is why the flu vaccine also needs to change regularly to keep up - they do not usually go pandemic.
Prof James Wood, head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said the work "Comes as a salutary reminder" that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of pathogens, and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses.
WHO SPOKESMAN SAYS CHINA STUDY ON NEW VIRUS IN PIGS SHOWS "WE CANNOT LET OUT GUARD DOWN" ON INFLUENZA DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC. But before we get carried away speculating about this new pandemic, how about we first figure out how things went so badly wrong during the early days of the last one?
No comments:
Post a Comment