Barcelona: Spain has knowledgeable the World Well being Group of a possible an infection with the swine flu virus in its A(H1N1)v variant that will have been transmitted between people, a well being official in Catalonia’s regional authorities informed Reuters on Friday.
Extra exams have been being carried out at the WHO’s reference laboratory for influenza in Britain to substantiate the analysis and rule out contamination or exterior interference, epidemiologist Esteve Fernandez mentioned.
“There is a very low risk of transmission to different individuals,” mentioned Fernandez, who heads the area’s public well being division, including he needed to ship a “reassuring message” to the neighborhood.
The particular person contaminated didn’t exhibit flu-like respiratory signs, and exams on direct contacts confirmed the virus had not retransmitted, officers mentioned in an earlier assertion.
Spain is a significant pork producer. Authorities had at first dominated out the likelihood of the affected person being contaminated by direct contact with pigs, however human-to-human transmission – whereas possible – had but to be confirmed, Fernandez mentioned.
He added that swine flu was widespread in pigs however uncommon in people, with transmission between people even rarer.
In a press release, a WHO spokesperson confirmed it had been knowledgeable of the an infection, highlighting the “very low” risk and that it was the fourth case in people reported in Spain since 2009.
World flu specialists assembly in Turkey this week mentioned this case in talks analyzing world influenza surveillance information, the WHO mentioned.
In 2023, the Netherlands notified the WHO of a confirmed human an infection with a swine influenza A(H1N1)v virus in an grownup with no historical past of occupational publicity to animals.
In 2009, the swine flu pandemic in people contaminated thousands and thousands of individuals. It was attributable to a virus that contained genetic materials from viruses that have been circulating in pigs, birds and people. (Reporting by Joan Faus, Ana Cantero, Emma Pinedo and Olivia Le Poidevin; Writing by David Latona; Modifying by Aislinn Laing, Louise Heavens, Rod Nickel)
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