BARCELONA, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Spain has informed the World Health Organization of a possible infection with the swine flu virus in its A(H1N1)v variant that may have been transmitted between humans, a health official in Catalonia’s regional government told Reuters on Friday.
Additional tests were being carried out at the WHO’s reference laboratory for influenza in Britain to confirm the diagnosis and rule out contamination or external interference, epidemiologist Esteve Fernandez said.
“There’s a very low risk of transmission to other people,” said Fernandez, who heads the region’s public health department, adding he wanted to send a “reassuring message” to the community.
The person infected did not exhibit flu-like respiratory symptoms, and tests on direct contacts showed the virus had not retransmitted, officials said in an earlier statement.
Spain is a major pork producer. Authorities had at first ruled out the possibility of the patient being infected by direct contact with pigs, but human-to-human transmission – while possible – had yet to be confirmed, Fernandez said.
He added that swine flu was common in pigs but rare in humans, with transmission between humans even rarer.
In a statement, a WHO spokesperson confirmed it had been informed of the infection, highlighting the “very low” risk and that it was the fourth case in humans reported in Spain since 2009.
Global flu experts meeting in Turkey this week discussed this case in talks examining global influenza surveillance data, the WHO said.
In 2023, the Netherlands notified the WHO of a confirmed human infection with a swine influenza A(H1N1)v virus in an adult with no history of occupational exposure to animals.
In 2009, the swine flu pandemic in humans infected millions of people. It was caused by a virus that contained genetic material from viruses that were circulating in pigs, birds and humans.
(Reporting by Joan Faus, Ana Cantero, Emma Pinedo and Olivia Le Poidevin; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Aislinn Laing, Louise Heavens, Rod Nickel)
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