The absence of gripe last year was celebrated with good news amid successive waves of covid. In the fall the flu vaccination for fear of co-infections and a greater saturation of the hospitals: finally, the situation was the opposite and both this virus and other pathogens practically “disappeared”.
However, already then there were voices that warned that that good news might actually not be so much and peaks of other diseases that have also disappeared, such as RSV, in summer, have seemed to agree with them. The fear now is that this time there is the flu and it appears earlier and more intensely. Various health organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States have called for vaccinations in the event of a possible especially “severe” epidemic. In Spain, this month the vaccination campaign starts, and the message is similar. Why is the vaccine especially important this year?
Masks and immunity
At the beginning of summer, a group of Spanish scientists published an article giving the possible reasons for a phenomenon that has been widely debated among experts: why the flu virus and others with the pandemic “disappeared” and why could it come back stronger. Article, Social Distancing, Lockdown and the Wide Use of Mask; A Magic Solution or a Double-Edged Sword for Respiratory Viruses Epidemiology?, published in the magazine Vaccines, wondered if protection measures against covid 19 was a “magic solution” to end other respiratory infections or actually could be a “double edged” sword.
The article exposed how the confinements, the mask and the social distance used against the covid had been “tremendously effective” against the flu and asked “to take into account that lack of exposure to certain pathogens can have unpredictable consequences“In the future. Immunity against certain respiratory viruses, they explained, decreases after a few months (one of the reasons why it is necessary to be vaccinated against the flu annually) and this loss of immunity is” especially intense “among children and the elderly.
“When there is a normal epidemic, a percentage of the population that varies between seasons is infected. That population gets natural protection so that the following year there are naturally resistant people. But if this year a large percentage of the population is not infected, the The bag of individuals susceptible to infection is going to be larger and influenza viruses, so to speak, are going to have more meal from which to feed, “he explained Ivan Sanz, one of those responsible for the study, a few months ago to LD. Immunity “is diluted if we do not expose ourselves to the virus”He said, “the body maintains a certain immunological memory” but in diseases with viruses that vary, that change, such as those of the flu, “it is more easily lost.”
That lack of natural immunity could lead to “more serious flu epidemics,” longer lasting and starting earlier, the authors noted. In these months other articles have added to this theory, relying on already studied cases of tougher flu seasons after warm winters with little circulation of the virus.
The importance of getting vaccinated
Sanz, scientific head of the National Flu Center of Valladolid, now explains to LD that in any case it is “a hypothesis”: “We are like volcanologists, We can only say what has happened, not what will happen“. Hopefully we are wrong,” says the doctor, who reiterates that in the face of this risk, “everything in our power” should be done to prevent, which would involve “vaccinating as many people as possible” and making use of “reasonable” of the mask, “if I am sick” or we are going to take care of “a person who is sick”.
It also warns of another factor that could influence a greater severity of the flu this winter: the fact that this year “we have been able to hunt with less skill” the influenza virus since it has not circulated in the southern hemisphere either. The flu vaccine is made according to the strains with the greatest circulation in the southern winter and in their case the situation has been the same. “Vaccine effectiveness could be lower,” he warned this week in a interview At Blacksmith’s House.
In any case, the message on the doorstep of the vaccination campaign, and in the midst of the debate on the third dose against the coronavirus, is that it is essential that vulnerable groups are vaccinated. As in the case of the coronavirus vaccine, the purchase of the flu vaccine is “centralized” and regions such as Madrid have ordered more vaccines and are urging Health to start the campaign on the 15th.
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