WHY IT MATTERS: The cases of swine flu set off alarm bells due to the pandemic potential of the swine flu virus if it recombines with a human flu virus, which could happen if a pig is infected with both at the same time.

In a later statement, the Catalan health department said the risk assessment for the population was considered “very low”.

The person infected did not exhibit flu-like respiratory symptoms, it said, and tests on direct contacts showed the virus had not retransmitted.

An earlier report by newspaper El Pais citing Catalan health department sources said the patient — who has since recovered — had no contact with pigs or pig farms, leading experts to conclude it was a human-to-human transmission of the pathogen.

This set off alarm bells due to the pandemic potential of the swine flu virus if it recombines with a human flu virus, which could happen if a pig is infected with both at the same time, the El Pais report added.

The WHO did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

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, Emma Pinedo and Olivia Le Poidevin

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Asked about communication received by the WHO from Washington on the H5N1 outbreak, Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva: “Communication is a challenge indeed. The traditional ways of contact have been cut.”

He declined to elaborate.

A U.S. outbreak of the H5N1 virus has infected nearly 70 people, mostly farm workers, since April 2024. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported for the first time last week that a second strain of bird flu was found in dairy cattle in Nevada, a discovery that ramped up concerns about the U.S. outbreak.

Under WHO rules known as the International Health Regulations (IHR), countries have binding obligations to communicate on public health events that have the potential to cross borders. These include advising the WHO immediately of a health emergency and measures on trade and travel.

Other countries have privately voiced concern at the idea that the United States would stop communicating about emerging viruses that could become the next pandemic. “If such a big country does not report anymore, what message does it send?” said a Western diplomat in Geneva.

Argentina has also said it plans to withdraw from the WHO, citing “deep differences” regarding the agency’s management of health issues, notably the COVID-19 pandemic.

— Reporting by Emma Farge

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The official also urged stronger efforts to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus to new species of animals and to humans.

“What we really need globally, in the U.S. and abroad, is much stronger surveillance in animals, in wild birds, in poultry, in animals that are known to be susceptible to infection,” WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told an online press conference.

The agency said it is in touch with partner agencies such as the World Organization for Animal Health and Food and Agriculture Organization to increase surveillance in animals.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month confirmed the presence of H5N1 bird flu in a pig on a backyard farm in Oregon.

Pigs represent a particular concern for the spread of bird flu because they can become co-infected with bird and human viruses, which could swap genes to form a new, more dangerous virus that can more easily infect humans.

“For us at the WHO we are always in a constant state of readiness as it relates to influenza, because it isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Kerkhove said, adding that the risk to the general population for avian influenza remains low globally.

So far, 55 human cases of H5N1 bird flu, including in a child, have been reported in the United States this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A teenager in B.C. was also reported to be hospitalized with avian influenza.

Most of these cases were among farm workers who had contact with infected poultry or cows. There has been no person-to-person spread associated with any of the H5N1 bird flu cases, according to the CDC, but dairy and other farm workers are considered to be at higher risk of contracting the virus.

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The poultry outbreak was confirmed by authorities on Sept. 20 and there has been no evidence to date of human-to-human transmission related to this event, the WHO said.

[RELATED] Avian flu circles back in Western Canada

The infections with influenza A (H5N1) of the two workers – males aged 19 and 27 – were detected in September and October, likely triggered by exposure to infected poultry or contaminated environments at the farm in Guadalajara in central Spain.

Both men did not have any symptoms and were isolated until they tested negative. Following the poultry outbreak, all farm workers and their close contacts were tested.

Spain’s health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bird flu infections in humans may range from asymptomatic or mild upper respiratory infection to severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, shock and even death.

From 2003 to Oct. 21, 868 human cases, including the two cases in Spain, and 456 deaths have been reported globally from 21 countries, according to the WHO.

Three human cases of infection, one from the United Kingdom in 2021 and the two from Spain in 2022, have been reported in Europe to date, it said.

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The One Health High-Level Expert Panel was an initiative launched by France and Germany late last year, and held its inaugural meeting earlier in May.

It will advise the WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health and the United Nations Environment Program on developing “risk assessment and surveillance frameworks” and establish “good practices to prevent and prepare for zoonotic outbreaks.”

The panel will also consider potential transmission risks in food production and distribution, urbanization and the construction of infrastructure, international travel and trade and activities that lead to biodiversity loss and climate change, the WHO said in a press release.

The panel will publish its first recommendations later this year.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is widely believed to have originated in wildlife trading networks in China and southeast Asia. The closest known genetic match of the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 has been found in bats.

A joint study into the origins of COVID-19 by China and WHO all but ruled out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a laboratory known to be studying bat coronaviruses, saying the most probable route of transmission was an as-yet unidentified intermediary species.

China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began late in 2019, has already banned most types of wildlife trade and consumption and is also setting up ecological “security barriers” to keep humans out of animal habitats.

The WHO says three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases originate in animals.

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Disappointing of course, but highly predictable. Vaccines are seen by the entire western world as our collective portal towards some sort of normalcy. The World Health Organization has rightly registered its concerns about vaccine hoarding.

Meanwhile, the same world agency has sent a team to look at the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The first visits were completed this week at a food market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where many believe the global pandemic started. Even if the investigation likely won’t generate much evidence regarding the pandemic’s origin, at least not early on, food safety nationalism is and will continue to impact the entire fact-finding discourse.

With the pandemic, while the entire world considers Wuhan to be ground zero, China has adopted a very different narrative. For months now, the Chinese government has released reports of imported food and products contaminated with COVID-19. In the summer last year, Beijing accused Brazil of exporting COVID-19-contaminated products. A sample of frozen chicken wings imported from Brazil tested positive in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. This happened in August, and the announcement was the latest in a series of reports of contaminated imported food products.

Again, in the fall, Beijing urged Chinese companies to halt imports of frozen products from countries that have been hard hit by the pandemic as fears continued to mount over the possibility of transmission through food packaging. According to Chinese authorities, the first local asymptomatic infections in many weeks were detected when a few port workers from the city of Qingdao, responsible for unloading frozen seafood, tested positive for COVID-19.

China has continuously suggested that the country was and is the victim of imported contaminated frozen foods, even though the science on the virus is now more developed than it was 11 months ago, as is its survival capacity. Contamination through food supply chains is highly unlikely. There has not been one known case thus far during the pandemic, outside of China, that is.

China is effectively playing the fear card. Some call it propaganda. Ever since China was hit by the tainted melamine-in-milk scandal, consumers in the country have always been suspicious about the safety of their domestic food. At the time, the country was hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the government was hesitant to disclose anything, not wanting the distraction. In 2008, the chosen tactic was concealment. Now, with the pandemic, China has clearly chosen risk management nationalism in food safety. China is trying to portray itself as the protector of evil, inside its borders. The pandemic is being weaponized as a menace against the Chinese people.

From some reports, it seems to be working. The focus on discriminating against imported foods has gone retail. Many food retailers in China are now separating imported products from domestic products. Shoppers will see separate sections for imported products, to protect them from the threat of unknowns. China, one of the world’s most active trading nations, is now allowing shoppers to mitigate risks themselves as they buy food at retail.

The pandemic has changed many rules, including how regulators handle perceived risks related to food safety. Make no mistake, China’s propaganda machine is in full force and the WHO-led investigation will be nothing more than a wild goose chase. The outbreak started more than a year ago. Taking key samples and conducting genetic epidemiological studies is going to be close to impossible. Most of the critical evidence would have disappeared by now, deliberately or otherwise.

China allowed the visit to Wuhan for one reason and one reason only. This is not about the virus, or about understanding how it all started. This is about China and its attempt to alter the COVID origin story. The science may not be on China’s side. But the one thing we have learned so far during this pandemic is that the science related to the virus has been, most of the time, politicized. And that is what China is doing.

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“China has been importing a large quantity of meats this year, and has detected virus on the packaging of cold chain products many times, even as lots of disinfection has been done domestically,” Gao Guan, spokesman for the China Meat Association, said by telephone on Tuesday.

“It should be better to handle this (virus control) at the meats exporting origins, and carry out disinfection at the production plants,” as the cost would be lower, and efficiency higher, Gao added.

China has ramped up disinfection and virus testing on frozen food after it found coronavirus on imported products and packaging.

The measures have pushed up costs, disrupted trade, and irritated major exporters.

The semi-official industry body suggested exporters in COVID-19 hit countries should disinfect the outer packaging of products and the inner side of containers before sealing export products, a statement published on the association’s official WeChat account said at the weekend.

The initiative was proposed to “ensure the safety of imported cold-chain food and boost consumers’ confidence in imported cold-chain products,” the statement said.

The proposal came after some major exporters, including JBS in Brazil, started to take measures including extensive disinfection of products and storage sites, to supply China with safe products, Gao said.

Reported cases have shown that contact with packaging contaminated with coronavirus could lead to human infection, said the Chinese association.

The World Health Organization has said the risk of catching COVID-19 from frozen food is low. Chinese officials echoed that such risk was low, but there was still a risk.

“The virus is new. We are still accumulating experience when fighting against it,” Gao said.

“We should get together and discuss how to use the most scientific, efficient and low-cost way to secure public health, and trade at the same time,” Gao added.

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Glyphosate, first developed by Bayer’s Monsanto under the Roundup brand, has generated intense global debate over its safety since a World Health Organization agency concluded in 2015 that it probably causes cancer.

While regulators worldwide have determined glyphosate to be safe, Bayer agreed in June to settle nearly 100,000 U.S. lawsuits for $10.9 billion, denying claims that Roundup caused cancer.

France will grant a temporary tax credit of 2,500 euros ($3,030) to farmers who declare in 2021 and/or in 2022 to have stopped use of glyphosate in the sectors most affected by a halt in the use of the weedkiller, such as wine, orchards and grain crops, the ministry said.

It also increased to 215 million euros planned financing to help farmers in the European Union’s top agricultural producer to change their agricultural equipment.

“The challenge is to put in place mechanisms to compensate for farmers’ costs due to the withdrawal (of) glyphosate, because today a farmer who invests to phase out glyphosate does not benefit from immediate value creation,” the ministry said in a statement.

Stopping the use of glyphosate on a grain farm leads to a loss in gross operating profit of up to 16 percent, which amounts to an extra cost of up to 80 euros per hectare, or up to 7,000 euros for an average farm of 87 hectares, the ministry said.

Last week Macron told online channel Brut that he had not changed his mind on the objective of ending use of glyphosate but recognised he had not succeeded in doing it within three years – a pledge he had made in 2017 – describing it as a collective failure.

France’s health and environment agency ANSES in October announced restrictions on glyphosate in farming, but stopped short of a full ban because of a lack of non-chemical alternatives in some areas.

($1 = 0.8260 euros)

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Health authorities found virus strains in humans and in mink which showed decreased sensitivity against antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of future vaccines, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference.

“We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well,” she said.

“The mutated virus in mink may pose a risk to the effectiveness of a future vaccine,” Frederiksen said, adding that it “risks being spread from Denmark to other countries.”

The findings, which have been shared with the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, were based on laboratory tests by the State Serum Institute, the Danish authority dealing with infectious diseases.

The head of WHO’s emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, on Friday called for full-scale scientific investigations of the “complex, complex issue” of humans — outside China — infecting mink which in turn transmitted the virus back to humans.

Outbreaks at mink farms have persisted in the Nordic country, the world’s largest producer of mink furs, despite repeated efforts to cull infected animals since June.

The country’s police, army and home guard would be deployed in order to speed up the culling process, Frederiksen said.

Tougher lockdown restrictions and intensified tracing efforts would be implemented to contain the virus in some areas of northern Denmark, home to a large number of mink farms, authorities said.

“The worst-case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” director at the State Serum Institute, Kare Molbak, said. The new strain showed diminished sensitivity towards antibodies, he added.

“That’s why we have to take this extremely seriously,” Molbak said.

Minks have also been culled in the Netherlands and Spain after infections were discovered.

Authorities had registered five cases of the new strain on mink farms and 12 cases in humans.

There are between 15 million and 17 million mink in Denmark, authorities said.

Canada, at the end of 2018, had 98 mink farms, down from 237 in 2014, according to Statistics Canada.

Of the 98, 43 were in Nova Scotia, 28 in Ontario. six each in British Columbia and Newfoundland, four each in Manitoba, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and three in Quebec.

Canada’s National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC) maintains a code of practice for the care and handling of farmed mink. A five-year review was completed in 2018.

NFACC, on its website, says the code is “currently undergoing an amendment,” expected to be completed in March next year, with a public comment period now running into December.

Issues flagged as “major challenges” expected to be addressed in those amendments include pen sizes, access to nest boxes and methods of euthanasia.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; additional reporting by Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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That study, by a team of Chinese scientists and published by the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), warned that a new swine flu virus, named G4, has become more infectious to humans and could become a potential “pandemic virus.”

However, China’s agriculture ministry said in a statement that the study has been interpreted by the media “in an exaggerated and nonfactual way.”

An analysis by the ministry concluded that sampling of the published study is too small to be representative, while the article lacks adequate evidence to show the G4 virus has become the dominant strain among pigs.

The ministry said it drew its conclusions after holding a seminar on the G4 virus’s impact on the hog industry and public health. Participants included Chinese veterinarians and anti-virus experts, as well as the leading authors of the PNAS study.

The participants concurred that the G4 virus is not new, the statement said. Furthermore, such a strain has been monitored continuously by the World Health Organization (WHO) and related agencies in China since 2011, the statement said, citing a senior WHO official.

In addition, the authors of the published study agreed that the G4 virus does not effectively replicate in the human body and cause disease, according to the statement.

The ministry’s statement was authored by Yang Hanchun, a swine viral disease scientist at China Agricultural University who also serves the role of expert on a ministry anti-epidemic committee.

— Reporting for Reuters by Samuel Shen, Hallie Gu and Ryan Woo.

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