Dr. Susan Detmer, an associate professor with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine reported record low numbers of Influenza this year and hopes that translates to the pig business.
Although the media tracked the spread of COVID-19, with little mention of Influenza this year, the major cause of Influenza strain spread in the human population is international airline travel. However, the reduction in travel has reduced the prevalence of respiratory pathogens.
The major cause of the Influenza strain on the human population is international airline travel between the southern and northern continents moving from season to season.
In the southern hemisphere, Australia is the prominent place to look for what they can expect. But unfortunately, because they were in lockdown with a closed border for the last year, they have incredibly low levels of both COVID and Influenza A, so not possible to go by what they have right now.
She encourages pork producers to apply the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic to prevent Influenza on the farm.
For human’s record low numbers of Influenza infections. They rose slightly over the winter but started dropping again and no one declared a season of Influenza in Canada. So, it did not make the threshold for the minimum number of cases. The Influenza B viruses are about a third in Canada and the opposite proportion in the United States, two-thirds Influenza B in the United States. The Influenza As are mixed, H3N2, H1N1 pandemic strain and some of the other seasonal human Influenzas usually seen but there’s no distinct pattern.
“There’s not enough detected Influenzas in North America to say that there’s a distinct pattern like typically seen with one strain dominating in the human population.”
Dr. Detmer said with travel limited between countries and even within countries and all of the social distancing to prevent COVID transmission has had a positive effect.
She said all respiratory pathogens including Influenza and even the common cold, are way down in humans this year.
So much for the human side, pork producers should apply the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic to prevent Influenza on the farm.
“As Influenza makes a comeback in Canada and the United States, we’ll see more pandemic virus circulating in humans and going back into pigs, and we want to prevent that because it does cause significant production losses. So human Influenza in pigs is something that we try to prevent.”
Every year, especially in January and February after the Christmas holidays, there is a surge in human to pig transmission of the pandemic H1N1 virus. Still, this last year officials detected minimal pandemic H1N1 in pigs. Furthermore, all H1N1 viruses were more than two years on those sites based on the phylogenetics.
“We know that human transmission to pigs was not occurring this year, and that has much to do with the human population not spreading the pandemic virus amongst themselves.”
Dr. Detmer said barn workers must make sure not to go to work sick.
“If you have a cough, getting tested and wearing masks will still be important to prevent influenza transmission in farms.” •
— By Harry Siemens
