Last year in late 2017, Australia was hit with a deadly flu virus. The virus known as H3N2, a strain of Influenza, began to spread in high volumes across the country as the winter season approached. The media has called it the dreaded ‘Aussie flu’ and it is currently wreaking havoc in Australia and its royal arms partner the UK.
It spread to all but two UK cities in a matter of days, putting hospitals under strain and prompting some to prohibit visitors. A number of Northern Ireland churches have even banned handshakes to combat the risk of infection. The flu has already claimed a number of lives in Ireland, Scotland and England.
Last year, Australian authority released a report that documented 745 Australian deaths, in laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza with more than 248,000 confirmed cases of the flu. The H3N2 virus, an aggressive and fast-mutating strain of influenza accounted for more than half of all flu cases across the nation in 2017.
Now this virus has found itself across overseas into the united states The flu epidemic has struck the entire mainland US at the same time and in similar levels for the first time ever as health officials warn the season could get worse.
Influenza activity is now widespread in all states except Hawaii with the deadly virus already claiming the lives of more than 85 adults and 20 children this flu season. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that two strains of influenza viruses are being reported across the country, including H3N2 and H1N1.
Of the reported cases across the country, mostly everyone is suffering from the H3N2 strain at the moment, but officials have warned that the H1N1 strain is also hitting. Medical officials are saying that 'We are seeing H1N1, which is one the other influenza viruses starting to show up in states that have already had H3 activity.
It emerged in 2009 that the pharmaceutical company Baxter had accidentally created the H3N2 flu virus, the original virus is totally harmless to ferrets, but after Baxter's experiments for an official experimental public vaccine for Austria, they had inexplicably contaminated H3N2 with the aggressive and non-declared avian flu virus H5N1.