After gastroenteritis, here’s the flu. Each year, two to six million people are affected in France, and the virus kills an average of 10,000 people. To counter the disease, Social Security sent 13 million vouchers to people at risk (over 65, chronically ill or pregnant women) so that they get vaccinated. Six regions are already in the pre-epidemic: Ile-de-France, PACA, Center-Loire Valley, Brittany, Burgundy and Occitanie. But experts say the epidemic is expected to start this week or next, due to the return of children to schools.
School classes, flu nest
The classroom is indeed a nest for the flu. Children catch it more easily than adults because it is often their first contact with the virus. And on them, it is both more virulent, more contagious too, especially for their parents.
So we already know that three out of four strains of the virus are circulating in France today, which means that all age groups can be affected. We also know that the vaccine’s effectiveness this year could be higher than in previous years because its composition seems more suited to the epidemic that is looming. All the more reason to get vaccinated.
“It takes 15 days for the vaccine to start to have an effect”
“We have to go very quickly there,” warns Bruno Lina, head of the national reference center for influenza in Lyon. “At the end of the day, it still takes 15 days, or even three weeks, for the vaccine to begin to have a protective effect. Of the few serious cases of influenza that have been observed, four-fifths have been observed in people who should have been vaccinated. So now is the time to do it, “he insists.
And it’s true, the big news this year is that all pharmacists can do it. 75% of them have launched. And according to figures from the USPO, the union of pharmacists, they had already vaccinated 500,000 people in mid-December, against 1.5 million for doctors.
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