1977 Russian flu

Influenza pandemic outbreaks The 1977 Russian flu was an influenza epidemic that was first reported by the Soviet Union in 1977 and lasted until 1979.Influenza pandemic preparedness plan : the role of WHO and guidelines for national and regional planning, Geneva, Switzerland, April 1999 April 1999 World Health Organization 10665/66155 free 38, 41 Mermel LA Swine-origin influenza virus in young age groups English Lancet 373 9681 2108–9 June 2009 19541030 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61145-4 The outbreak in northern China started in May 1977, slightly earlier than that in the Soviet Union. Kung HC, Jen KF, Yuan WC, Tien SF, Chu CM Influenza in China in 1977: recurrence of influenzavirus A subtype H1N1 Bulletin of the World Health Organization 56 6 913–8 1978 310732 2395678 Wertheim JO The re-emergence of H1N1 influenza virus in 1977: a cautionary tale for estimating divergence times using biologically unrealistic sampling dates PLOS ONE 5 6 e11184 June 2010 20567599 2887442 10.1371/journal.pone.0011184 2010PLoSO...511184W free The outbreak mostly affected a population younger than 25 or 26 years of age, Rozo M, Gronvall GK The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate mBio 6 4 August 2015 26286690 4542197 10.1128/mBio.01013-15 free Gregg MB, Hinman AR, Craven RB The Russian flu. Its history and implications for this year's influenza season JAMA 240 21 2260–3 November 1978 702749 10.1001/jama.240.21.2260 and was described as mild. It was caused by an H1N1 flu strain which highly resembled a virus strain circulating worldwide from 1946 to 1957. Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, Zimmer SM, Burke DS Historical perspective--Emergence of influenza A (H1N1) viruses The New England Journal of Medicine 361 3 279–85 July 2009 19564632 10.1056/NEJMra0904322 free Horimoto T, Kawaoka Y August 2005 Influenza: lessons from past pandemics, warnings from current incidents Nature Reviews. Microbiology 3 8 591–600 10.1038/nrmicro1208 16064053 30154845 freeNolan Tom 2009-07-02 Was H1N1 leaked from a laboratory? https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2009/07/02/tom-nolan-was-h1n1-leaked-from-a-laboratory/ live https://web.archive.org/web/20160616211557/http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2009/07/02/tom-nolan-was-h1n1-leaked-from-a-laboratory/ 2016-06-16 2021-01-24 The BMJ en-USA Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Pandemic: The 1977 "Russian Flu". History Perspectives in Biology & Medicine EBSCOhost https://www.ebsco.com/articles/history/2f2693d1-1e4e-5e72-80f3-f2ab2549548e/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-pandemic-the-1977-russian-flu 2026-09-08 www.ebsco.com or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape. The World Health Organization, however, ruled out a laboratory origin in 1978 after discussions with researchers in the Soviet Union and China. The Russian flu first reached the United Kingdom in 1977, and the United States in January 1978. The first outbreak in the United States took place in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and more than 70% of those infected were students. The flu spread in schools and military bases throughout the United States, but most of those infected were below the age of 26. In the United States, the death rate in affected individuals was low. History of outbreak In May 1977, an outbreak of flu took place in northern China including Liaoning, Jilin and Tianjin.Colen BD 1978-01-28 Russian Flu Has Arrived In the U.S. en-US The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/01/28/russian-flu-has-arrived-in-the-us/3d24b12b-5f75-480d-afc4-f31f1de81113/ 2021-01-24 2020-07-16 https://web.archive.org/web/20200716031837/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/01/28/russian-flu-has-arrived-in-the-us/3d24b12b-5f75-480d-afc4-f31f1de81113/ liveBrown D 2004-05-29 SARS Cases in Asia Show Labs' Risks en-US The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/sars-cases-in-asia-show-labs-risks/4c28a35a-e673-4953-a6a8-1e61c366c1c8/ 2021-01-24 2021-01-26 https://web.archive.org/web/20210126191641/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/05/29/sars-cases-in-asia-show-labs-risks/4c28a35a-e673-4953-a6a8-1e61c366c1c8/ live The strain was isolated and determined by Chinese researchers to be H1N1, which mostly affected students in middle and primary schools who lacked immunity to H1N1 virus. Clinical symptoms were relatively mild. Other areas in mainland China and Hong Kong were also affected in the following months. In the same year, the H1N1 strain was detected in Siberia shortly after the outbreak in China, and then spread rapidly across the Soviet Union, which was the first country to report the outbreak to the World Health Organization (the People's Republic of China was not a member of WHO until 1981World Health Organization in China https://www.who.int/china/about-us live https://web.archive.org/web/20210329215405/https://www.who.int/china/about-us 2021-03-29 2021-01-24 World Health Organization en). Therefore, the outbreak was named "Russian flu".Laver Graeme Garman Elspeth Pandemic influenza: its origin and control Microbes and Infection November 2002 4 13 1309–1316 10.1016/S1286-4579(02)00013-8 12443895 free In 1977, Russian flu reached the United Kingdom.The flu virus that nearly killed me https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21125713 BBC News 21 January 2013 The virus reached the United States in January 1978. The first outbreak in the U.S. was reported in a high school in Cheyenne, where the clinical attack rate was more than 70% but involved solely students. Even though infections were seen in schools and military bases throughout the U.S., there were few reports of infection in people older than 26, and the death rate in affected individuals was low. Since late 1977, the H1N1 strain has begun to co-circulate with the H3N2 strain in humans, as seasonal flu. Virology There have been various H1N1 strains. The 1918 Spanish flu was caused by an H1N1 strain, and H1N1 strains afterwards became endemic and circulated around the world until 1957, when they all but vanished. (There were some isolated reports of other H1N1 strains such as the one in the early 1960s.Klimov A. I. Ghendon Y. Z. Genome analysis of H1N1 influenza virus strains isolated in the U.S.S.R. during an epidemic in 1961–1962 Archives of Virology September 1981 70 3 225–232 10.1007/BF01315129 7325808 ) H1N1 reappeared in 1977 and the strain of the Russian flu was almost identical to one that had been isolated in 1950. This feature of the 1977 strain has been interpreted as pointing towards an anthropogenic origin of the virus, and the epidemic is the only documented human epidemic believed uncontroversially to result from research activity.Lewis Gregory Jordan Jacob L. Relman David A. Koblentz Gregory D. Leung Jade Dafoe Allan Nelson Cassidy Epstein Gerald L. Katz Rebecca Montague Michael Alley Ethan C. Filone Claire Marie Luby Stephen Church George M. Millett Piers Esvelt Kevin M. Cameron Elizabeth E. Inglesby Thomas V. The biosecurity benefits of genetic engineering attribution Nature Communications 8 December 2020 11 1 6294 2020NatCo..11.6294L 10.1038/s41467-020-19149-2 free 7722838 33293537 Gong YN, Kuo RL, Chen GW, Shih SR August 2018 Centennial review of influenza in Taiwan Biomedical Journal 41 4 234–241 10.1016/j.bj.2018.08.002 6197989 30348266 It has been suggested by many researchers that the virus leaked to the public from a laboratory accident.10.1007/978-1-4939-8678-1_28 The Silver Lining in Gain-of-Function Experiments with Pathogens of Pandemic Potential Influenza Virus Methods in Molecular Biology 2018 Imperiale Michael J. Howard Don Casadevall Arturo 1836 575–587 30151593 7120448 978-1-4939-8677-4 dos Reis Mario Hay Alan J. Goldstein Richard A. Using Non-Homogeneous Models of Nucleotide Substitution to Identify Host Shift Events: Application to the Origin of the 1918 'Spanish' Influenza Pandemic Virus Journal of Molecular Evolution October 2009 69 4 333–345 10.1007/s00239-009-9282-x 19787384 2772961 2009JMolE..69..333D The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare an attenuated H1N1 vaccine in response to 1976 swine flu outbreak of 1976.Mecklin John Threatened pandemics and laboratory escapes: Self-fulfilling prophecies https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-laboratory-escapes-self-fulfilling-prophecies/ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 31 March 2014 The World Health Organization, however, ruled out a laboratory origin in 1978 after discussions with researchers in the Soviet Union and China: their report stated that "the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time". Others have suggested that it resulted from a vaccine trial or challenge.Holmes Edward C. Goldstein Stephen A. Rasmussen Angela L. Robertson David L. Crits-Christoph Alexander Wertheim Joel O. Anthony Simon J. Barclay Wendy S. Boni Maciej F. Doherty Peter C. Farrar Jeremy Geoghegan Jemma L. Jiang Xiaowei Leibowitz Julian L. Neil Stuart J.D. Skern Tim Weiss Susan R. Worobey Michael Andersen Kristian G. Garry Robert F. Rambaut Andrew The origins of SARS-CoV-2: A critical review Cell September 2021 184 19 4848–4856 10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.017 34480864 8373617 The multiple source locations of outbreak made a single-laboratory origin less likely than a vaccine accident. Virologist Peter Palese claims the outbreak was the "result of vaccine trials in the Far East involving the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1," according to personal communication with virologist Chi-Ming Chu.Palese Peter Influenza: old and new threats Nature Medicine December 2004 10 S12 S82–S87 10.1038/nm1141 15577936 The idea that the virus may have been a deliberately-deployed bioweapon appears unlikely and inconsistent with Soviet biological weapon research at the time. In February 2021, some researchers suggested that this virus might have been engineered via serial passage,Sirotkin Karl Sirotkin Dan Clarification regarding the likely leak of a novel viral strain from a Soviet laboratory BioEssays April 2021 43 4 e2100017 10.1002/bies.202100017 33576073 referring to the original study of 1981.Kozlov J. V. Gorbulev V. G. Kurmanova A. G. Bayev A. A. Shilov A. A. Zhdanov V. M. On the Origin of the H1N1 (A/USSR/90/77) Influenza Virus Journal of General Virology October 1981 56 2 437–440 10.1099/0022-1317-56-2-437 7310382 Clinical statistics The Russian flu was relatively benign. In 1977, Chinese researchers found uneven attack rates among different groups of students, as well as many mild and asymptomatic infections. In the United States, some researchers estimate the influenza mortality rate (not the infection fatality rate or the case fatality rate) around 5 in every 100,000 population, less than that of the typical seasonal influenza (~6 in every 100,000 population).Doshi Peter Trends in Recorded Influenza Mortality: United States, 1900–2004 American Journal of Public Health May 2008 98 5 939–945 10.2105/AJPH.2007.119933 2374803 18381993 Most of the infected people were under the age of 26 or 25, presumably because older people retained immunity from exposure to previous H1N1 strains. Contradicting these descriptions, one review article proposed that 700,000 people died due to the Russian flu worldwide and that the virus was "Identical with the "Spanish flu" virus".Michaelis M, Doerr HW, Cinatl J August 2009 Novel swine-origin influenza A virus in humans: another pandemic knocking at the door Medical Microbiology and Immunology 198 3 175–83 10.1007/s00430-009-0118-5 19543913 free See also COVID-19 lab leak theory Influenza List of epidemics 1976 swine flu outbreak 2006 H5N1 outbreak in India 2007 Australian equine influenza outbreak 2007 Bernard Matthews H5N1 outbreak 2008 H5N1 outbreak in West Bengal 2015 United States H5N2 outbreak 2020–2023 H5N8 outbreak References Category:1970s epidemics Category:1977 disease outbreaks Category:1977 in the Soviet Union Category:1977 in China Category:Influenza pandemics Category:Disease outbreaks in China Category:Disease outbreaks in the Soviet Union Category:Disasters in Siberia Category:History of Cheyenne, Wyoming Category:1970s in Siberia