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Jul 05, 2020 1 min, 39 secs
But influenza viruses have also been a regular source of worries, as they can often spread from agricultural animals to us?

Earlier this week, a report was released that described an influenza virus with what the researchers who identified it called "pandemic potential." The virus is currently jumping from agricultural animals to us, but it is not currently able to spread between humans.

The institutions that some of these researchers are affiliated with—the Key Laboratory of Animal Epidemiology and Zoonosis, the Chinese National Influenza Center, and the Center for Influenza Research and Early-Warning—provide some indication of how seriously China has been taking the risk of the newly evolved influenza strain.

And there's a reason for this: pigs are known to be infected by influenza viruses native to other pigs, to birds, and to us humans—who they often find themselves in close proximity to.

The good news is that influenza viruses aren't massively prevalent in China's agricultural system; only 0.45 percent of the randomly selected pigs were carrying an influenza virus.

There are a lot of strains of influenza viruses that can be distinguished by specific features in the sequences of their genomes.

Instead, the genes of the influenza virus are spread across eight different RNA molecules.

Given the surveillance took place over eight years, the researchers were able to track changes in the viruses that were circulating among China's pigs.

It's composed of parts from three different influenza strains that have been described previously but is largely based on an avian virus isolated in Europe.

The parent lineage of the virus was already known to interact with human cells, and the researchers confirmed that it could infect human respiratory-tract cells grown in a culture dish.

Ferrets are often used as a model for influenza-virus spread, and this virus was able to infect ferrets either through direct contact or by respiratory droplets.

The answer is clearly no—there is no indication that the virus is spreading among humans at this point.

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