There’s a dangerous virus brewing in pigs—but there’s no need to panic yet
Viruses grow and evolve in many animal hosts, and pigs allow them to become especially dangerous. (Unsplash/)We first learned about COVID-19 when headlines proclaimed that the virus was already spreading like wildfire amongst humans. But what if there was a way to catch these viruses before they become efficiently transmissible between humans? In a study published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists presented a way to do just that. By closely surveying the movements of a new strain of swine influenza in pig farms, they hoped to gain insight into the ways we can catch a virus before it wreaks havoc on the human population. Along the way, the scientists uncovered a new swine influenza virus called G4. It’s a blend of three existing viruses—avian influenza, the swine influenza responsible for the 2009 pandemic, and another North American swine influenza that’s a hodgepodge of genes from avian,...