H2n2 virus

Influenza A Virus (H2N2) The A/H2N2 pandemic that occurred between 1957 and 1958 caused about 70000 deaths in the US. From: Encyclopedia of Respiratory Medicine, 2006 Related terms: • Virus • Reassortment • Hemagglutinin • Influenza • Influenza Virus • Influenzavirus A • Influenza A Virus (H1N1) • Influenza A Virus (H3N2) • Bird P.K. Tosh, ... G.C. Gray, in Encyclopedia of Microbiology (Third Edition), 2009 Hong Kong Influenza – 1968 (H3N2) Like the 1957 H2N2 pandemic influenza strain, a reassortment with an avian H3 strain gave rise to the 1968 influenza pandemic first recognized during the Hong Kong outbreaks. Unlike the pandemic of 1957, the first wave of the H3N2 pandemic of 1968 peaked just 4 months after the start of vaccine production, with only 20 million doses produced. Nearly one million people died globally from this pandemic. Existing immunity to circulating N2 strains likely mediated the lower mortality of the 1968 pandemic relative to those pandemics that preceded it. Indeed, immunization with the H2N2 vaccine was found to have a 54% efficacy against the H3N2 pandemic strain. R.A. Lamb, K.L. Roberts, in Reference Module in Biomedical Sciences, 2014 The Pandemics of 1957 (Asian Influenza) and 1968 (Hong Kong Influenza) In 1957 a newly identified H2N2 influenza virus that is a reassortment between avian and human genes (see reassortment) was identified as the causative agent of influenza. Although the ensuing pandemic was not extraordinarily pathogenic, the inc...

Apr 13, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – The revelation that samples of the influenza virus that caused the flu pandemic of 1957-58 were inadvertently sent to thousands of laboratories has raised fears of a new pandemic and triggered an urgent effort to destroy the samples. Samples of the influenza A(H2N2) virus were sent to 3,747 labs, the vast majority of them in the United States, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement last night. The WHO recommended that all the samples, which were sent for use in lab proficiency testing, be destroyed immediately. The H2N2 virus triggered the "Asian flu" pandemic of 1957-58, which killed an estimated 1 million to 4 million people worldwide, including 70,000 in the United States. The virus continued to circulate and cause annual epidemics until 1968, when the H3N2 virus emerged and sparked a new pandemic, the WHO said. Because the H2N2 virus has not circulated since then and is not used in current vaccines, "persons born after 1968 are expected to have no or only limited immunity to H2N2," the WHO said. "The risk is relatively low that a lab worker will get sick, but a large number of labs got it and if someone does get infected, the risk of illness is high and this virus has shown to be fully transmissible," said Klaus Stohr, chief of the WHO's global influenza program, as reported by the Associated Press (AP). He called the sending of the samples "unwise" and "unfortunate." The virus samples were sent to labs by the College of Am...