Why Flu Outbreaks Have Been the Worst in Nearly a Decade

The only thing worse than getting the flu is catching it after you’ve gotten a flu shot. It’s been a terrible year for outbreaks — the worst in almost a decade. Contributing to that is the high failure rate of this year’s vaccine. The current shot is just 25 percent effective against the H3N2 virus, this season’s most-often-identified strain by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The experts say, with enough time and money, they can do a lot better. “There has to be a wholesale change to how we make the flu vaccine,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’re always setting ourselves up for vaccine mismatch and failures and the like because of the lead time in how long it takes the vaccines to be made.” Drug companies and public-health agencies are already grappling with the challenge of next year and beyond. Officials must decide several months ahead of flu season the make-up of the year’s vaccine. Flu shots are typically 40 percent to 60 percent effective in any given season, though this year fell short of that mark. The ultimate goal is a universal vaccine that would operate more like a measles inoculation than a vaccine targeted at a handful of strains of flu. The idea is to offer something closer to 90 percent protection against a disease for years — if not for life — with a single vaccine. It’s still early days. And out-maneuvering ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Bloomberg flu healthytime onetime Source Type: news