United States – Two new cases of H1N1 influenza have been reported in the United States that are hard to kill by medication said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday.
Mutations of Concern
The CDC released new information in its published Emerging Infectious Diseases journal stating that the mutations I223V and S247N are of public health significance, as reported by The Hills.
The existence of new flu strains was discovered and reported by CBS News.
Treatment and Management
This comes after scientists in Hong Kong conducting tests discovered higher transmissibility and that the new strains were more potent against the flu treatment oseltamivir, better known as Tamiflu.
The new strains also remained sensitive to other FDA-approved antiflu medications, however, as of now, there is no impact on clinical management of the mutated virus a CDC insisted in the email response.
According to the CDC, flu vaccination provides protection from such illnesses ‘with or without these mutations’.
These two cases were confirmed this past fall and winter while they were in laboratories at the Connecticut Department of Health and the University of Michigan. These mutations have been in circulation globally since May 2023, but the CDC noted that their detection rate was initially low.
Monitoring and Future Outlook
The CDC said that it could not predict how many of the new viruses would be present in the next flu season but stressed that “it is crucial to keep watching the spread of these viruses as well as the development of these viruses.”
The outbreak in 2009 was due to the swine flu H1N1 virus, and based on figures from the World Health Organization, there were 491,382 number of confirmed cases and 18,449 deaths during the outbreak, as reported by The Hills.