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Swine Flu Outbreak: What You Need To Know To Protect Yourself

With the recent outbreak of the deadly swine flu people are worried about protecting themselves from the infection as there is still no vaccine available against the disease. According to Dr. Richard Besser, acting director at the Centers for Disease Controls(CDC), the best precautionary measure against swine flu would be to keep your mouth covered and wash your hands regularly.

In order to stop the disease from spreading Dr. Besser advised people to wash their hands often, avoid going out if they are suffering from fever and try to cover their mouth while coughing. The virus would spread from person to person by means of sneezing or coughing by people who are suffering from this influenza. Most of the people are also likely to catch the disease by coming in contact with certain things that may be infected by the flu virus and then accidentally touching their nose or mouth.

The symptoms of swine flue may include fever, sore throat, cough, headache, body ache, fatigue and chills which are also common symptoms of a typical flu infection. In certain cases it is also observed that people suffer from vomiting and diarrhea. According to CDC severe illnesses including respiratory failure and pneumonia resulting to death have also been noticed with people infected from swine flu.

Diagnosis of swine flu would require collection of respiratory specimen from patient within the first  four to five days. During this stage the person is expected to be shedding virus. In certain cases, even in children it is observed that they may shed virus even after 10 days or longer. The collected specimen should be tested at the CDC laboratory for a positive identification.

According to CDC antiviral drugs like rimantadine, amantadine, zanamivir and oseltamivir are licensed to be used in US for treating this influenza. The recent swine flu viruses infecting human are resistant to rimantadine and amantadine, so CDC recommends zanamivir or oseltamivir for the prevention and cure of swine influenza virus. There is a vaccine that prevents the swine flu in pigs but no such vaccine has been developed for humans yet.