Researcher in the Viral Immunology: Therapies and Vaccines group at the Margarita Salas Biological Research Center.
According to the newspaper El País, the Catalan Regional Government has reported a case of swine flu —not swine fever, which is caused by another virus and does not affect humans— in an 83-year-old person in the province of Lleida. The newspaper points out that, as the patient had no contact with pigs that could transmit the virus, they may have been infected by another person.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported that on January 29th, Spanish authorities notified a possible case of human infection with swine flu virus A(H1N1)v in a worker from a Catalan pig farm. After being diagnosed with bronchitis, subsequent laboratory analyses confirmed it as swine flu A(H1N1)v. The ECDC informs that the patient has fully recovered, and to date, no new cases have been detected among close contacts or among the worker's colleagues at the farm.