Are people in the United States catching the H1N1 virus from pigs?
There have not been any reports of pig-to-human transmission in the U.S. There have not even been any reports of H1N1 Influenza’s existing in any swine herds in the U.S. All human disease incidence reports to date have been from human-to-human transmissions. * How are people catching the disease? At this time, the only known source of where people have gotten the disease is from other humans. When healthy people are exposed to a person infected with the H1N1 virus, they may potentially become infected. * Why was the H1N1 virus initially called swine flu? A portion of the genetic material in the H1N1 virus is identical to that seen in cases of swine influenza several years ago. The H1N1 genetic material of the virus is also made up, however, of portions that originated as human influenza cases and other portions that originated as past avian influenza cases. Genetic material from all three sources have re-assorted to develop the current Influenza A H1N1 strain causing human disease. Sin
