The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that it has received twelve reports of humans infected with the A(H3N2) – or swine flu virus – from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Iowa, and Indiana.
Eleven of the victims were children, and half of all the cases could not be connected to exposure to swine, the CDC adds. All patients have made a full recovery after three had been admitted to hospital, Medical News Today reports.
The investigation into the West Virginia case suggests the child was infected by another person, not an animal. Some amount of human-to-human spread of the virus took place in the unnamed community where the child lives, according to details released by the CDC.
The H3N2 case is the 12th in five states reported in the US since this new virus was first spotted in July of this year.
The CDC acknowledges there are probably more cases that haven´t been picked up by the country´s flu surveillance systems. “We don´t think these are all the cases,” said Dr. Joe Bresee, head of the influenza epidemiology team in the CDC´s Influenza division.
No other known country has reported seeing these virus infections in humans which has also been isolated from pigs in the US, The Canadian Press reports.
An adult male was reported in late October of this year by the Indiana Dept. of Health as likely having the A(H2N2) virus infection contacted through his workplace.
The patient explained that he had been in direct contact with pigs during the week before his symptoms appeared. He reported not having worn any PPE (personal protective equipment) because the swine appeared healthy. No other family or coworkers reported any similar illness.
The patient exhibited symptoms including body aches, vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath, cough, and fever – which started appearing on October 20th. He was admitted to hospital and stayed there for four days. He was not treated with antiviral drugs and fully recovered
A 4-year-old child developed flu-like symptoms, including an elevated body temperature in November. This was preceded by a week of congestion and coughing. Initial tests did not detect influenza or respiratory syncytial virus, however, an alternative rRT-PCR test carried out at the hospital identified influenza A.
The child had neither been exposed to pigs nor travelled recently. A few days afterwards, the patient was discharged from the hospital and made a full recovery.
Six of the 12 had exposure to pigs but in the other six, no contact with swine could be found. The CDC has said it believes some of these cases are the result of human-to-human spread, but suggests spread among people is probably still limited at this point.
“It´s not clear yet that these viruses have acquired the ability to circulate in humans in a sustained way. We certainly haven´t seen that in the outbreaks that we´ve investigated,” Bresee said.
Public health experts don´t believe these latest infections should be cause for alarm given the amount of immunity the human population has to human H3N2 viruses. However it might be able to seed itself in humans enough to continue to spread, potentially creating a situation where there might be three families of circulating influenza A viruses: the H1N1s, the human H3N2s and these variant H3N2s.
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On the Net:
CDC Reveals 12 Recent Swine Flu Cases
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