If Swine Flu Wasn't Enough, Now There's Swine Ebola

See? There are some good things about living in the Middle East. ;-)

Humans may give swine flu to pigs in new twist to pandemic

(Excerpted)

The strain of influenza, A/H1N1, that is currently pandemic in humans has been shown to be infectious to pigs and to spread rapidly in a trial pig population.

In research published today in Journal of General Virology, Dr Thomas Vahlenkamp and a team of virologists from the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut in Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany, experimentally infected five pigs with the strain of swine flu that is causing the current human pandemic. Within four days the virus had spread to three un-infected pigs housed with the infected ones and all pigs were showing clinical signs of swine flu.

“Although in the early stages of the swine flu pandemic there were worries that humans would catch the virus from pigs, this has so far not been documented and pigs and other animals have not been involved in the current spread of A/H1N1 influenza in humans,” said Dr Vahlenkamp, “However, with the increasing numbers of human infections, a spill over of this human virus to pigs is becoming more likely.

The prevention of human-to-pig transmissions should have a high priority in order to avoid involvement of pigs in the epidemiology of this pandemic”.

Although the virus spread quickly to the non-infected pigs, it did not spread to five chickens that were housed together with the pigs.

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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/sfgm-hmg070809.php

Yes Mam, don't forget that housecats and ferrets are also susceptible to the influenza and can contract the virus from humans. That’ll sure throw a kink into the MSM once this little factoid (if it does) becomes widespread.

Yes , you are correct . The swine flu is causing vomiting and diarrhea in some patients .

Parts Of Britain "Near An H1N1 Epidemic"; 14 Dead

Thu Jul 9, 2009 6:40pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Fourteen Britons who had contracted H1N1 flu have died and the rapid spread of infection in two areas of the country is close to epidemic level, health officials said on Thursday.

The Department of Health said Britain now had 9,718 laboratory-confirmed cases, the third most in the world behind the United States and Mexico.

Britain's Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said the actual number of cases was likely to be higher.

[snip]

There is more including the case of swine to human transmission.

" JANUARY 26, 2009

Update: Ebola-Reston Virus Jumped From Pigs to At Least One Human

The Ebola-Reston virus, recently found for the first time in pigs in the Philippines, has now been confirmed to have infected at least one human. Scientists are relieved because the person did not get sick and is unlikely to have passed the virus to others. The virus is related to Ebola strains that have caused fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans in Africa. But Ebola-Reston has not caused serious illness in the two dozen people previously infected through contact with monkeys dying from the viral disease. Officials are concerned about finding the virus in pigs because the farm animals live in close proximity to humans and are thought to be "mixing vessels" where animal viruses mutate into forms dangerous to humans.