News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers who spent the past 3 years testing pigs for influenza A viruses at county fairs in Ohio found that infected animals commonly appear clinically normal, highlighting one of the challenges health officials faced in preventing the spread of variant influenza to humans at fairs this summer.

(CIDRAP News) – To outside observers, the novel H1N1 virus spreading quickly to every corner of the globe must seem like it came out of nowhere, but the organism is a fourth generation of the 1918 pandemic virus and comes from an H1N1 family tree that is colorful and complex, according to two historical reviews that appear today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

(CIDRAP News) – Swine influenza viruses have never been documented as the cause of a human influenza pandemic, but in 1976 they generated pandemic fears strong enough to trigger a nationwide vaccination campaign.

The reporting of swine flu cases in two California children this week stirred memories of the 1976 episode, which caused major embarrassment for public health authorities when the pandemic never materialized.