Hong Kong flu

Hong Kong flu
Hong Kong flu
Disease	Influenza
Virus strain	H3N2 strain of Influenza A virus
Dates	1968–1969
Deaths	between 1 and 4 million
Fatality rate	0.2%

The Hong Kong flu, also known as the 1968 flu pandemic, was a flu pandemic that occurred in 1968 and 1969 and which killed between one and four million people globally.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] It is among the deadliest pandemics in history, and was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus. The virus was descended from H2N2 (which caused the Asian flu pandemic in 1957–1958) through antigenic shift, a genetic process in which genes from multiple subtypes are reassorted to form a new virus.^[6]^[7]^[8]

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^ Jester, Barbara J.; Uyeki, Timothy M.; Jernigan, Daniel B. (May 2020). "Fifty Years of Influenza A(H3N2) Following the Pandemic of 1968". American Journal of Public Health. 110 (5): 669–676. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305557. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 7144439. PMID 32267748.