But the same measures that fight the coronavirus are effective against the flu – and vaccines are offering a weapon against it
Last modified on Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 21.59 BST
Public fitness experts, researchers and brands warn that the upcoming flu season can lead to a “double barrel” respiratory disease epidemic in the United States, and autumn and winter are expected to cause the spread of Covid-19.
At the same time, the researchers said that lately used methods to prevent Covid-19 transmission, i.e. washing hands, masking and distancing themselves socially, can also decrease influenza epidemics, if Americans are willing to practice them.
“We will necessarily face a season of double-barrel respiratory viruses, either influenza or Covid,” said Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Infectious Diseases Foundation and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee.
The flu season peaks between December and February in the northern hemisphere. It caused about 61,000 deaths and 810,000 hospitalizations in 2019 in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
By comparison, Covid-19 killed more than 166,000 people in the United States just a few months later this year, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University. The illness hospitalized another 293,000 people between March and May 2020, according to fitness consultanus Avalere. These deaths and infections have also occurred despite enormous efforts, such as the closure of much of the U.S. economy, to curb the spread of the virus.
Although the seasonality of influenza is obviously not understood, the way it spreads is well documented. Influenza is transmitted in the same way as the Covid-19: coughing, spitting and sneezing nearby in enclosed spaces and in crowds. For these reasons, social estrangement measures are effective against both influenza and Covid-19 and were practiced in the fatal influenza pandemic of 1918.
When the spread of the Covid-19 network began in the United States in March, widespread closures reduced the flu season by 4 to six weeks in 2020, said Dr. Richard Kennedy, co-director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Laboratory.
This “is probably due directly to social remoteness and masking and closure,” Kennedy said. A similar phenomenon occurs in the southern hemisphere, where the winter flu season is over. Countries such as Chile have experienced traditionally low influenza transmission.
“Will we see the same thing here? The answer is, if we use our mask and our social distances, yes. If we stay closed, yes,” Kennedy said. “But I don’t know if Americans are going to do all or part of the above.”
“We see teams that need to open up the economy regardless of risks. Then we see other people saying, “No, we have to close and we don’t care about the economic crisis,” Kennedy said.
But unlike Covid-19, the world has a tool to fight seasonal flu: flu vaccines.
Each year, public fitness officials up to 4 strains of influenza will be included in the next year’s vaccine. The one-year delay is mandatory for manufacturing, but it’s also what makes the vaccine so imperfect.
Meanwhile, circulating strains can evolve, a phenomenon called “drift”. A pandemic influenza, such as the 1918 pandemic that killed some 675,000 Americans, is the result of a primary genetic replacement called “replace.” These primary genetic adjustments would become a seasonal influenza vaccine against pandemic influenza.
The “bad” years of influenza are the result of drift or mismatch, when the strains chosen for seasonal vaccines do not conform to those that actually circulate. Because of drift, flu vaccines are sometimes effective between 10% and 60%, according to the CDC.
However, even in case of insufficiency, the researchers say that the vaccine continues to provide protection. Other vaccinated people are less likely to expand severe symptoms or be hospitalized, even when infected.
For this reason, the U.S. fitness government He’s doing everything he can to get the flu shot to more Americans. Vaccine brands sent the first doses in August and are expected to produce up to 198 million doses of vaccines for the United States alone. Health officials expect this accumulation of more than 10% in production to result in the vaccination of another 20 million Americans.
But even this ordinary momentum means that a massive proportion of the 328 million people in the United States will be left out. In 2019, less than a portion of adults were drained from influenza, according to the CDC. African Americans and Latinos were less likely to get a flu shot than their white counterparts.
Young people and the elderly have been vaccinated due to the pandemic. GlaxoSmithKline reported that one of his vaccines, called shingles for adult shingles, experienced a 67% drop in sales in April and May 2020.
In addition, many non-unusual pathways for Americans to discharge vaccines remain closed. People who paint or report at home will be running flu clinics on site, in offices and schools. More likely they would be afraid to pass the doctor in the middle of a pandemic.
“This is a public physical fitness crisis,” said Dr. Leonard Friedland, Director of Scientific Affairs and Public Health for GlaxoSmithKline’s North American Vaccine Division and a member of the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee.
A severe influenza epidemic would put pressure on already scarce medical equipment, testing and labor materials, all necessary to combat Covid-19. It can also cause confusion, as patients with fever and flu cough rush to the hospital emergency room because of Covid-19’s concern.
“We don’t have curative products to treat him or save him Covid, and we still don’t have vaccines to save him Covid,” Friedland said. “But what we have are vaccines that can help in the fight against the flu, and flu shots make a big difference to ease the strain on our hospital system.”
While Americans favor flu vaccines, their practical reports can provide long-term information on a Covid-19 vaccine, if and when. It is highly likely that any approved Covid-19 vaccine will only provide transitory immunity, which requires an annual booster or injection.
In addition, approved Covid-19 vaccines are effective at least 50%, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, not unlike the 45% effectiveness of the 2019 flu vaccine.
“If he’s older than that, we can all celebrate,” Schaffner said. “We have promised too much and threatened to deliver insufficiently, because we have put a lot of emphasis on the vaccine and talked about it in terms of:” we can necessarily Covid.” And I don’t think there’s an expert who thinks this. “
Similarly, influenza vaccine researchers hope that efforts to expand a coronavirus vaccine can lead to progress toward a “universal” influenza vaccine, of the kind that can confer lasting immunity and occur during a influenza pandemic.
One of the researchers, Dr. Emily Erbelding, director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said she believed the new generation evolved for Covid-19 promising.
“Things are advancing faster than ever in developing vaccines,” Erbelding said. “I hope we have an effective vaccine by 2021. It’s faster than any flu vaccine that’s been developed.”