The corona virus has claimed more than 500,000 lives and over ten million have been infected so far. During Monday's press conference, the WHO warned that, seven months after the outbreak, the world is still in the middle of the pandemic.
"We have the worst ahead of us," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
And now new clouds of concern are gathering. Chinese scientists are now warning that the world may be forced to tackle another virus pandemic, reports The Guardian.
Researchers have discovered a new type of swine flu after analyzing more than 30,000 samples from pigs between 2011 and 2018.
Many are already infectedAccording to the study, which was presented on Monday, the new virus "shows all the essential features" of adapting to infect people.
The new virus, named G4, is a genetic relative of the H1N1 strain that caused swine flu pandemic in 2009. According to the researchers, one of ten pigs working in China has already been infected by the virus. Antibody tests also show that over 4 percent of China's population has been exposed to the virus.
"Worrying"There is still no evidence that the virus can infect humans. Nevertheless, the authors of the study now want to see urgent measures to control the infection and avoid a new pandemic.
"The fact that people have been infected by the G4 virus is worrying because the virus will adapt further to humans and thus increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers write.
However, Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the American University of Columbia, thinks there is no reason for the public to panic.
"Our understanding of what a potential influenza strain is is limited," she writes on Twitter according to CNN.
More than 60 percent of Sweden's population was vaccinated against swine flu, which began to spread across much of the world in 2009. Nearly 500 of them were affected by narcolepsy.
By mid-February, 27 deaths from the infection had been registered in Sweden, according to a report from the Swedish Agency for Social Protection and Emergency Preparedness.