What is the currently on-going Influenza A/H1N1 crisis?
A new (re-assorted) type of H1N1 influenza virus is currently spreading in humans in at least a dozen countries, causing illness, mostly not severe; and as of 30 April 2009, deaths in two countries. Recent sequencing results made public from CDC Atlanta demonstrate that the Influenza A/H1N1 virus currently circulating among humans in the USA, Mexico and other parts of the world, contains genetic reassortment of three viruses which have been circulating in pigs in Europe, Asia and America since 1998. This new information suggests that the progenitor virus strain was a virus circulating in swine and has evolved in humans through gradual mutations over a 10-12 year span, and has components of avian and human origin. On 2 May 2009, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced that it had found H1N1 flu virus in a swine herd in Alberta, and that it was highly probable that the pigs were exposed to the virus from a worker who had recently returned from Mexico and had been exhibiting
