Swine flu becoming resistant to Tamiflu
Two year-old Claire Davis has her swine flu vaccination injected at a community clinic in Washington, DC, on January 13, 2010.
Tamiflu is one of the few treatments that can cure swine flu. But cases of swine flu that are resistant to Tamiflu are getting more common, researchers warn. Dr Aeron Hurt, an Australian researcher from the World Health Organization, found that approximately 2 percent of swine flu cases are resistant to Tamiflu, the Guardian reported.
The Tamiflu resistance was detected in people who haven't even been treated with the drug, suggesting that the mutant, drug-resistant germs are spreading. “That appears to be a larger risk now than it did at the start of the pandemic,” Hurt told Bloomberg.
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Hurt's findings come two years after research from 2011 found that even though just one person in Newcastle had used Tamiflu, a Tamiflu-resistant form of the virus had spread to 20 percent of those in the area who developed swine flu, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Swine flu is no longer considered a pandemic by health officials. It once crowded out other influenza viruses, BBC News reported, but that is no longer the case as other countries are reporting a mix of different strains of the flu virus.