The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday a $5 million initiative to offer seasonal flu vaccines to livestock workers in order to reduce the public health concern that a new ...
Influenza viruses are shifty entities. They accumulate small genetic changes on a regular basis, necessitating yearly updates to the flu vaccines because the prior year’s strain may not look much like ...
When influenza viruses that infect birds and humans meet in the same cell, they can shuffle their genomes and produce new strains that might have pandemic potential. Think of this process, called ...
Helen Branswell covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development. Follow her on Mastodon and Bluesky. You can reach Helen on ...
The latest bird flu outbreak in South Korea is presumed to be a new type of avian influenza strain that is a reassortment of highly pathogenic strains that spread in Europe last year, the quarantine ...
Viruses have an extraordinary ability to diversify and evolve. For segmented viruses, reassortment can introduce drastic genomic and phenotypic changes by allowing a direct exchange of genetic ...
The exchange of genetic material between two closely related strains of the influenza A virus may have caused the 1947 and 1951 human flu epidemics, according to biologists. The findings could help ...