This season’s flu vaccine has offered little to no protection
against getting a mild or moderate case of influenza, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention said this week.
اضافة اعلان
In a study of more than 3,600 Americans in seven states, the
CDC
said in a report that the vaccine was only around 16% effective, a rate that it
said was “not statistically significant.”
“It’s not ineffective, but it’s clearly suboptimal in its
efficacy,” Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist at the Food and Drug
Administration, said Thursday. He reviewed the report but was not associated
with it.
Still, despite the vaccine’s lackluster performance this season,
which started in October and lasts through May, the CDC suggested that people
get inoculated, saying that it could “prevent serious outcomes.”
Scientists had warned in 2020 that the flu season, if it was
severe, could converge with COVID-19 to create a dreaded “twindemic.” But
coronavirus restrictions — including working from home and the use of masks —
along with a high flu vaccine rate may have helped reduce caseloads the past
few seasons, during which, the CDC said, cases have been at a record low.
Still, even a mild flu season can be devastating. The CDC
estimated that during the 2019-20 flu season, around 22,000 people in the
country had died and 400,000 had been hospitalized.
This season, the agency said, “influenza activity” declined in
December and January, during the worst of the omicron surge, but increased in
early February.
In October and November 2021, the agency investigated a flu
outbreak at the University of Michigan, where there were 745 cases, mostly
involving students who had not been vaccinated against the flu. Investigators
there also found that the vaccine did not offer much protection.
Goodman said that this season’s results showed how much flu
vaccines could be improved.
“The next pandemic could be an influenza pandemic,” Goodman
said, “so we need better vaccines.”
Every year, scientists decide whether they need to update the
flu vaccine to protect against the strains that they predict will dominate the
upcoming season.
The low efficacy rate this season, Goodman said, “suggests that
there was a mismatch between the strains of virus in the vaccine and what’s
circulating.”
Scientists updated this season’s vaccines to offer protection
against four flu viruses, including H3N2, which ended up being this season’s
dominant strain, the report said. H3N2 was also dominant during the 2017-18 flu
season, which experts had said was “moderately severe.”
Since the agency began calculating the vaccine’s effectiveness
in 2004, the efficacy rate has been as high as 60% — for the 2010-11 season —
and as low as 10%, during the first season the CDC tracked it. Goodman said he
would consider a rate between 50% and 80% to be good.
The flu is a life-threatening respiratory illness that can fill
up hospital beds. It shares symptoms with COVID-19, including fever, coughing,
a sore throat and fatigue. Adults 65 and older, pregnant people,
immunocompromised people and children younger than 5 are most at risk of the
flu.
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