Keeping swine flu at bay (Image: Leander Baerenz/Getty)

A VIRUS that causes the common cold may be saving people from swine flu. If this intriguing idea turns out to be true, it would explain why swine flu’s autumn wave has been slow to take off in some countries and point to new ways to fight flu.

“It is really surprising that there has not been more pandemic flu activity in many European countries,” says Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

It is really surprising that there has not been more pandemic flu activity in many European countries …