Do we know who was the first person to get the flu?

Dr Rob: Unfortunately we don’t know who the first person to get the flu was as we think flu has been around for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years and in those days it wasn’t even possible to test whether someone had flu or not. Even with the more recent “swine flu” pandemic we don’t know exactly how it started or who was the first person to be infected. However, the first outbreaks were in Mexico and it’s quite likely that there had been ongoing cases for a couple of months by the time the outbreak was detected. Quite often it takes a while before we get a final picture of how a new strain started and although we’re unlikely to ever find out who was the first person to be infected, scientists think that the virus first entered humans in September 2008 – http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090505/full/459014a/box/1.html7.