Coronavirus world round-up: new swine flu has 'potential' to be new global pandemic

Follow the latest coronavirus news in our daily live blog Read all our Covid-19 coverage here Subscribe to The Telegraph, free for one month New swine flu 'has pandemic potential' Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published in the US science journal PNAS. Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009. It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital, allowing them to isolate 179 swine flu viruses. The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs. Read more: Chinese scientists discover a new swine flu capable of triggering a pandemic

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