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Swine flu found in two pigs at Ohio State Fair
By Jim Woods
The Columbus Dispatch Thursday August 2, 2012 10:13 PM
Two pigs were sent home from the Ohio State Fair today, after tests confirmed they are suffering from swine flu.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture is closely monitoring pigs at the fair because of a recent swine flu outbreak among people who attended the recent Butler County Fair in southwestern Ohio. The swine flu virus can be passed from pigs to humans and vice-versa.
Ohio Department of Health officials said yesterday that tests confirmed nine people who attended the county fair had an H3N2 strain of the swine flu. The nine people were among as many as 41 people ? all but two of them children ? who became sick with swine flulike symptoms after attending the fair. There was a similar recent outbreak connected to a fair in Indiana.
State Veterinarian Tony Forshey had veterinarians take the temperatures of any pigs that looked ill at the Ohio State Fair. Both hogs that tested positive for the virus were running a fever when they were swabbed.
?We will continue to have veterinarians in the barns to closely monitor the hogs at the Ohio State Fair and to take temperatures and samples of any that do not look 100 percent healthy,? said Ohio Agriculture Director David Daniels.
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