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What's next?
There's a general assumption that the flu outbreak—if it isn't already
cresting—is likely to decline in the near future, as outbreaks of this
sort tend to be prevalent during winter in the northern hemisphere. The
big question is what we can expect from this strain of flu when winter
rolls around. Nobody really knows for sure. Flu strains have been
identified with various degrees of virulence and drug resistance, and
it's distinctly possible that the virus could further adapt to human
hosts over the next few months, so public health authorities are taking
reasonable precautions.
The CDC has already restocked the doses of antiviral medication it
distributed to the states last week, and it's putting the groundwork in
place to develop a vaccine should one be deemed necessary. Complete
sequencing of the viral DNA, which is now a small and inexpensive step
beyond the RT-PCR testing described above, has been done with a variety
of samples worldwide, and these indicate that all the circulating
viruses are 99-100 percent identical. This should make producing a
specific vaccine less of a challenge than it might otherwise be.
Continued isolation and sequencing will be key to getting a sense of
the virus' evolution in the coming months, revealing things like its
mutation rate and the accumulation of changes that might help it adapt
to human hosts. In the meantime, the worries over the current outbreak
have at least allowed public health authorities to reiterate some basic
messages that will be useful whatever develops: wash your hands often,
cover your mouth when sneezing and coughing, and stay at home when
you're sick.
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