ATLANTA — Don’t pet the pigs.
That’s the message state and county fair visitors got Thursday from health officials who reported a five-fold increase of cases of a new strain of swine flu that spreads from pigs to people. Most of the cases are linked to the fairs.
This flu has mild symptoms, and it’s not really spreading from person to person.
“This is not a pandemic situation,” said Dr. Joseph Bresee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But any flu can be a risk for some people, and people should be cautious, he added.
The case count jumped from 29 a week ago to 158 this week, thanks to a wave of cases in Indiana and Ohio, said Bresee, the agency’s chief of influenza epidemiology.
Most of the infected patients are children — probably because many were working closely with raising, displaying and visiting pigs at the agricultural fairs, Bresee said.
The CDC has been tracking cases since last summer. A concern: The new strain has a gene from the 2009 pandemic strain that might let it spread more easily than pig viruses normally do.
