Swine Flu
Schools, Health care facilities, businesses and private individuals everywhere are sounding an alarm in response to the reappearance of a potentially deadly strain of Swine Flu.
Swine Flu is a respiratory disease normally found in pigs and caused by type A influenza viruses.
Just as common flu is passed along, Swine Flu is thought to be spread by coughing, sneezing or touching something that has the live virus on it. Some viruses can live 2 hours or longer outside the body.
The best current advice is to practice good hand hygiene. Periodic hand washing with an antimicrobial hand soap or the use of an alcohol based hand sanitizer when hand washing is not possible is a good preventive measure.
Swine influenza is known to be caused by an Influenza A virus, a genus of the Orthomyxoviridae family of viruses known to be susceptible to quat based disinfectants. While members of virus families, or subtypes (for example H1N1) may express different infectious characteristics, the virus family members all share the same taxanomy, or physicochemical characteristics that lead to susceptibilty to inactivation by quat based disinfectants. In the US, the market and EPA consider all strains of Influenza A virus to have the same susceptibility to inactivation by quat based disinfectants, or if a product can kill one strain, it can kill all. While a given EPA Registered disinfectant label may not list Swine Flue (infectious agent) specifically, if it lists influenza A virus, it will effectively inactivate all influenza A viruses regardless of the specific subtype.
