Worse than H1N1: Fears of a new pandemic as goat flu outbreak in the Netherlands kills 6.
A virus called goat flu, or Q-fever, has appeared in the Netherlands, raising concerns over the possibility of an outbreak of a new global pandemic while the world is still trying to curb swine flu that has killed thousands, press reports said Wednesday.
More than 2,300 people have been infected with goat flu in the European country and six people have died since last week, according to online news sources.
….Q-fever infections usually occur in a cluster in one year and then peter out the next. But the Dutch outbreak has been growing and spreading out over agricultural areas for three years despite increasingly strong measures to contain it.
“That hasn’t happened before,” Van Son said, “not in Europe or anywhere else.”
So far there has been no known human-to-human transmission of Q-fever. Dutch authorities are planning to slaughter hundreds of thousands of goats and sheep in that country.
