WHO takes pandemic alert to 11 6 on misplaced virus
Earlier today, the World Health Organization held a press conference to announce that the current H1N1 flu outbreak has caused it to raise its pandemic alert to the highest level. Although most seasonal flu tends to settle down in the Northern Hemisphere by now, the bulk of the cases continues to be in North America, although roughly 75 countries have now reported cases. Meanwhile, in an impressive display of the capabilities that were developed to enable genome sequencing and comparisons, researchers are already reconstructing the evolutionary history of the virus, and finding that it’s the latest version of a virus that may have been around for a decade.
First up, some nomenclature. Neither swine flu nor H1N1 are very specific to this particular strain, so I’m going to adopt a description used in a paper I’ll be discussing later: swine-origin influenza A virus, or S-OIV. That’s not especially specific either, but it’s not obviously been used to describe a previous strain, and it seems to be in the process of being adopted by a number of organizations, including the CDC.
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