New Brazilian Swine Flu Discovered

A new strain of swine flu has been discovered in Brazil, showing that the type A H1N1 swine flu virus is fully capable of mutating.

New Strain of Swine Flu Discovered in Brazil – Infectious Disease – FOXNews.com

A new strain of the swine flu virus has been discovered by Brazilian scientists.

The scientists uncovered the new strain after examining samples from a patient who was hospitalized in Sao Paulo in April, Agence France-Presse reported.

The 26-year-old, who developed flu symptoms after returning from Mexico, has since made a full recovery.

The variant has been called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 by the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, which compared it with samples of the H1N1 swine flu from California.

It was not yet known whether the new strain causes more severe infections than the current H1N1 strain, which has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization.

Nearly 36,000 people in 76 countries have been infected with the H1N1 virus, according to the latest figures from the WHO, causing more than 160 deaths.

So they don’t yet know if this particular strain of swine flu is any more dangerous than the one which has recently been declared a global pandemic, but the fact that a new, separate strain has been identified already could arose fears of a repeat of the 1918 H1N1 Spanish flu virus pandemic which evolved into a much more harmful strain, eventually killing tens of millions of people around the world just after the First World War.