In 1957, a doctor in Singapore noticed that hospitals were treating an unusual number of influenza-like cases. Influenza is sometimes called ‘flu’ or ‘bad cold’. He took samples from the throats of patients and was able to find the virus of this influenza in his hospital.
There are three main types of the influenza virus. The most important of these are type A and B, each of them having several subgroups. With the instrument at the hospital the doctors recognized that the outbreak was due to a virus in group A, but he did not know the subgroup. Then he reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization in Geneva. W.H.O. published the important news alongside reports of a similar outbreak in Hong Kong, where about 15-20% of the population had become ill.
As soon as the London doctors received the packages of throat samples, doctors began the standard tests. They found that by reproducing itself with very high speed, the virus had grown more than a million times within two days. Continuing their careful tests, the doctors checked the effect of drugs against all the known subgroups of virus type A. None of them gave any protection. This, then, was a new influenza virus, against which the people of the world had no help whatever.
Having found the virus they were working with, the two doctors now dropped it into the noses of some specially selected animals, which get influenza as human beings do. In a short time the usual signs of the disease appeared. (1)These experiments proved that the new virus was easy to catch, but it was not a killer. Scientists, like the general public, called it simply Asian flu.
The first discovery of the virus, however, was made in China before the disease appeared in other countries. Various reports showed that the influenza outbreak started in China, probably in February of 1957. By the middle of March it had spread all over China. The virus was found by Chinese doctors early in March. But China was not a member of the World Health Organization and therefore did not report outbreaks of disease to it. (2) Not until two months later, when travelers carried the virus into Hong Kong, from where it spread to Singapore, did the news of the outbreak reach the rest of the world. By this time it was well on its way around the world.
Thereafter, W.H.O’s Weekly Reports described the steady spread of this great virus outbreak, which within four months swept through every continent.

1957年，一位新加坡医生注意到，医院里治疗的有疑似流感症状的病患数量很不寻常。流行性感冒有时被称作“流感”或“重感冒”。他从患者的喉咙进行了取样，并找到了他医院里病患所得流感的病毒。
流感病毒主要有三个类型。其中最重要的是Ａ型和Ｂ型，每一种类型又能分成好几组。医生们使用医院里的仪器确认，此次疫情是由Ａ型病毒引起的，但他们不知道是哪个分组。他们即将疫情报告给总部在日内瓦的世界卫生组织。世界卫生组织发布了这条重要新闻并在旁边报道了在香港的类似疫情，约１５－２０％的人口已经感染了瘟疫。
伦敦医生收到喉咙样本的包裹后，立即开始了标准测试。他们发现，通过高速复制、繁殖，病毒在两天内增加了100多万倍。继续他们仔细的测试后，医生检查了药物对其的影响，并与所有已知Ａ型病毒的分组进行了对比，没有任何相同之处。那么这是一种新的流感病毒，在它面前世界人民是如此的无助。
现在发现了他们所研究的是一种新的病毒，这两名医生把它投入了一些专门选定的动物鼻子里，它们也像人类一样患上了这种流感。在很短的时间内，这种疾病常见的症状出现了。（１）这些试验证明，新病毒是很容易感染上的，但它不会致命。科学家就像普通市民一样仅仅称这种病毒为亚洲流感。
不过，在这种疾病出现在其他国家之前，首次发现它是在中国。各种报告显示，这种流感疫情的传播可能于１９５７年２月从中国开始。到３月中旬，它已遍布全中国。中国医生在３月初发现了该病毒。但中国不是世界卫生组织成员，因此没有向其报告疾病的疫情。（２）直到两个月后，当携带病毒旅客将其传入香港，并从那里蔓延到新加坡时，有关这次疫情的新闻才传达到世界其余地区。这个时候，它已经流传到了世界各地。
此后，世界卫生组织每周的报告都描述了这次病毒大爆发的稳步传播，它在４个月内席卷了全球。