Asian flu

American  

Pathology.

1. a form of epidemic influenza caused by a virus believed to have been carried from Asia in the late 1950s.

---

Asian flu British  

noun

1. a type of influenza recurring in worldwide epidemics, caused by a virus (A2 strain or subsequent antigenic variants), which apparently originated in China in 1957

---

Example Sentences

When she contracted Asian flu, the virus paralyzed her with “a vise cluster of migraines.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 31, 2025

My mother died in 1957 in the Asian flu pandemic.

From Washington Post • Oct. 26, 2021

The H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Spanish flu disappeared when the H2N2 virus that touched off the Asian flu pandemic emerged in 1957.

From Scientific American • Jan. 9, 2018

This career was interrupted by the second world war, during which Freeborn trained as a fighter pilot before being diagnosed with Asian flu and haemophilia.

From The Guardian • Feb. 8, 2013

Because of its conservative financial approach and its entrepreneurial strengths, Taiwan suffered little compared with many of its neighbors from "the Asian flu" in 1998.

From The 1999 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency