The emergence and re-emergence of influenza viruses with pandemic potential for both human and veterinary public health is of great concern globally. Prior to 1997 the scientific community was of the opinion that they understood the influenza virus pretty well; then, influenza jumped directly from poultry to infect and kill people in Hong Kong. Recently the H3N8 equine influenza virus has caused respiratory disease and death in dogs. Avian influenza viruses of Asian-H9 subtype have spread worldwide since the early 1990s, readily infecting a broad spectrum of domestic and wild bird species. Infection levels in poultry populations in the Middle East and Asia are high, providing a reservoir of virus that can lead to transmission to pigs where there is close contact between the species. It is possible these viruses are maintained independently of bird populations and are able to produce clinical disease in pigs. Recent studies in China and Korea have detected an apparently increased prevalence of virus in pig populations. This suggests the virus may have acquired the ability to transmit efficiently from pig to pig. This virus may be adapting to pigs and may become a significant future swine pathogen. In 2003, a catastrophic outbreak of poultry influenza in the Netherlands with H7N7 (avian) virus resulted in the death or slaughter of 30 million poultry. Investigations of 13 HPAI-infected farms keeping both pigs and poultry revealed that pigs on five farms had been infected with the virus. This outbreak demonstrated the ease with which these viruses can cross to pigs and raises issues for control of avian influenza in the future where different species, including pigs, are kept on the same farm premises (epidemiological unit). Repeated introductions of swine influenza viruses to turkeys, which may be coinfected with avian influenza viruses, provide opportunities for the emergence of new virus types (novel reassortants) with genes adapted for replication in pigs or even humans. There is a continuing need to monitor pigs and domestic birds to better understand interspecies transmission and the emergence of novel influenza viruses. Ten years ago public health and veterinary officials were convinced they understood the scientific basis of influenza transmission and adaptation. Currently the scientific community is far less confident they can predict the behaviour of influenza viruses. Making risk based and policy decisions in times of scientific uncertainty is difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The emergence and re-emergence of influenza viruses with pandemic potential for both human and veterinary public health is of great concern globally. Prior to 1997 the scientific community was of the opinion that they understood the influenza virus pretty well; then, influenza jumped directly from poultry to infect and kill people in Hong Kong. Recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[930],"tags":[5361,8882,13816,5454,6212,16845,2673,9628,19644,23694,60,562,20007,111,26380,2679,3006,1994,5352,5341,3465,15459,13564,14,33,16262,138,21206,17743,2365,76,16679,4467,35,20911,4874,1791,15479],"class_list":["post-4131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-production","tag-adaptation","tag-al","tag-ass","tag-ball","tag-china","tag-close","tag-concerns","tag-contact","tag-dd","tag-dir","tag-disease","tag-farms","tag-gh","tag-health","tag-infec","tag-infection","tag-influenza","tag-netherlands","tag-opinion","tag-outbreak","tag-pea","tag-ped","tag-people","tag-pig","tag-pigs","tag-pl","tag-poultry","tag-prem","tag-prod","tag-risk","tag-slaughter","tag-smit","tag-species","tag-swine","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-virus","tag-wild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}