Iowa authorities recently confirmed three new cases of a new swine-flu variant, which causes a mild respiratory sickness with fever, raising concerns that the flu is spreading and could eventually spread globally.

Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said that all the three children affected with the new flu variant, dubbed S-OtrH3N2, were in contact with one another, but none had a recent exposure to swine.

Earlier, three S-OtrH3N2 cases were detected in Pennsylvania, two in Indiana and two in Maine.

The newly discovered variant, S-OtrH3N2, has one gene from the H1N1 virus along with other genes from influenza viruses that have been found in North American swine.

The United Nations health body, the WHO, is mulling over what it would need to do if the new virus spread globally.

Fukuda, a leading influenza expert at WHO said, “(We’re) trying to make sure that we’re ready to move quickly, if we have to move quickly, but also trying not to raise alarm bells.”

In 2009, some patients in Texas and California were found infected with H1N1 swine flu, which gradually spread worldwide and triggered the first flu epidemic in more than four decades.