Tags: Disease.
The 1968 flu pandemic was a category 2 flu pandemic whose outbreak in 1968 and 1969 killed an estimated one million people worldwide. It was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus descended from H2N2 through antigenic shift a genetic process in which genes from multiple subtypes reassorted to form a new virus. Because it originated in Hong Kong the pandemic is also referred to as Hong Kong flu.