Category: Flu Vaccine

As the flu season approaches, flu shots are available at Falls Community Health. The flu shot remains one of the most effective safeguards against the influenza virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends everyone six months and older receive a flu vaccine annually, but certain groups are at higher risk for complications from influenza. Those groups include adults aged 65 and older, pregnant women, and those with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and chronic kidney disease.

Adults and children can get the flu shot by appointment at Falls Community Health, located at 521 North Main Avenue. Most insurance will cover the cost of the flu shot, but a sliding fee discount will apply for patients who qualify for the sliding fee program. To schedule an appointment, call 605-367-8793. The clinic operates from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Learn more at http://www.SiouxFalls.org/FCH. Falls Community Health is a community health clinic operated by the City of Sioux Falls Health Department.

Falls Community Health would also like to remind the public to practice good hand hygiene, cover their coughs and sneezes, and stay home if they feel ill.

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Falls Community Health Now Offering Flu Vaccinations - Sioux Falls

Is 2023 turning out to be an early or late flu season?

It's a little bit delayed. We've had some unusual seasonality lately because of COVID. The flu really diminished during COVID because people were taking precautions such as wearing masks, social distancing, and not going out in public. Because of that, flu dropped a lot. And the seasonality of it hasnt returned to normal yet. For example, last year and the year prior to that, the flu season started incredibly early. Whereas right now, if we look at the number of cases that are being reported to the Centers for Disease Control, its still quite low. We may be shifting back to what it was like pre-COVID, when infections started to rise significantly in December, persist through January and February, then start to taper off in March and April.

The current flu vaccines are quadrivalent, which means they protect against four different strains. These include two influenza A viruses, the H1N1 and H3N2 subtypes, which are cocirculating. The other major influenza type that causes severe morbidity and mortality is influenza B, so we incorporate two influenza B strains into the vaccine each year as well.

Yes. We know, for instance, that immunity against H1N1 does not provide protection against H3N2, because they're so different from one another. It's important to have multiple types in the vaccine to provide the best protection.

The vaccine can be reformulated every year. Generally, around the world, there are H1N1, H3N2, and influenza B viruses that are constantly circulating and constantly evolving. Because of that, we do studies to understand: Does immunity from last year's vaccine provide protection against what is currently circulating in the southern hemisphere? If it does protect, then we don't reformulate the vaccine against that particular type of the virus. But if the virus that is currently circulating evades immunity against last year's flu vaccine, then we update the vaccine.

Absolutely not. There are two types of vaccines you can get. The first is an inactivated flu vaccine its a live virus that's grown, but then it's treated to be inactive so it can no longer live. The vast majority of people receive an inactivated influenza vaccine. The other type of vaccine that people, largely children, receive is the live attenuated vaccine. This is a live virus, but its adapted to inefficiently infect humans. It can persist upward of a day to two days within the nasal tract, but it is typically cleared in healthy children with no to minor symptoms. Often the symptoms people experience following vaccination that feel like the flu is just your immune response trying to mount an effective immune response.

Yes, you absolutely can.

There's no point in getting the vaccine if you actively have an infection, because it's too late for it to do anything. What a vaccine is intended to do is to inform your immune system that, Hey, this is something you could be exposed to in the next year, so it can jack up the antibodies and mount a response. But if you're already infected, it's not going to do much, because antibodies take weeks to develop

Generally, the immunity you generate from an infection is fairly good; it's just not as pleasant as getting a vaccine. If you want to make sure you don't get the next flu virus, it doesn't hurt to get the vaccine within three months after getting infected. One reason for doing that is that when you get infected, youre only seeing one strain, such as H1N1, H3N2, or one of the B viruses. When you get vaccinated, you see all of them. You're boosting your immune response against all influenza, as opposed to just one type.

We dont have at-home tests for the flu like we do for COVID-19. One benefit of getting tested is so you can know if you have something you can spread to other people. The second benefit is that if you catch the infection early enough, there are antivirals that can be prescribed. Those give you the potential to beat it before it gets too bad, or at least minimize infection and spread.

Vaccination is the obvious one, then just being cautious of where you're going and what you're doing. If you're going somewhere you know there could be sick people, such as a clinic, be cautious and wear a mask.

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What to Know About the 2023 Flu Season - University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Vaccine mandates do play a significant role in boosting vaccination rates. This was particularly true during the 2020-2021 influenza season according to the study Vaccine Mandates and Influenza Vaccination During the Pandemic.

Authors of the study, published in the November 2023 issue of Pediatrics, assessed influenza vaccination data using insurance claims for children ages 6 months to 18 years living in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. They found during the pandemic, a flu vaccination mandate for children in school was associated with higher vaccination rates, particularly for those who were not previously vaccinated.

The story is different for families who vaccinated their children in years prior and who lived in areas with elevated COVID-19 numbers during the 2020-2021 influenza season. These children had a lower predicted probability of receiving a flu vaccine. Possible reasons include avoiding in-person clinic visits based on fear of COVID-19 exposure, the inability to schedule appointments due to limited availability of in-person office visits or a lack of options for a vaccination because school services shut down with the switch to remote learning.

Researchers say understanding how the COVID-19 response and mandate policies affected changes in decision making about influenza vaccination, particularly for previously unvaccinated children, may aid in the development of future strategies to increase youth vaccination rates for flu and other infectious diseases like COVID-19.

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AAP: Getting a flu vaccine during the pandemic often hinged on ... - The Highland County Press

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Simon Fraser University researchers studying the evolutionary history of flu viruses have found that a new quantitative analysis of how they evolved may help predict future strains. The research draws on a field known as phylogenetics, which focuses on how groups of organisms are evolutionarily related, and is published in the journalScience Advances.

Researchers used large phylogenetic trees to predict which strains are most likely to grow during the upcoming flu season, and determined that this approach was moderately effective in detecting future strains of the influenza virus, and could be another tool in the toolbox to guide seasonal flu vaccine development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant change in influenza transmission dynamics, says mathematics professor and Canada Research Chair, Caroline Colijn. We explored how machine learning can identify influenza virus sequences that are potentially good candidates for inclusion in seasonal influenza vaccines.

In order for vaccination to be successful, the specific viruses included in seasonal flu vaccines need to be similar to those influenza viruses that will circulate in the upcoming season, Colijn explains. The effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccines varies (for example, ranging from 25-75 per cent in children), and depends on whether the strains that circulate match those that were projected and included in the vaccine.

Researchers studied phylogenetic trees, essentially the family tree of the influenza virus, with information from the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID). After creating phylogenies using over 65,000 RNA sequences from influenzas surface proteins, collected between 1970 and 2020, they used features in these trees to identify strains that were likely to rise in number in the coming season.

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We were able to identify similar candidate strains to those proposed by the World Health Organization, suggesting that this machine learning approach can help inform vaccine strain selection, says Colijn.

Reference:Hayati M, Sobkowiak B, Stockdale JE, Colijn C. Phylogenetic identification of influenza virus candidates for seasonal vaccines. Sci Adv. 2023;9(44):eabp9185. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abp9185

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Studying the Evolutionary History of Flu Viruses Shapes Vaccine ... - Technology Networks

Parents and carers of pre-school and primary aged children are being encouraged to make sure their child gets the free flu vaccine this winter.

Given as a painless nasal spray, the vaccine not only helps protect children but can also help prevent them spreading the virus to more vulnerable family members and friends over the winter months.

Invitation appointment letters for 2 to 5-year-old pre-school children were posted from August and primary school aged children have received consent forms for in-school vaccination sessions taking place this autumn around Ayrshire. If your child has missed their appointment or school clinic, or has been given an appointment thats not suitable, they can attend a Childhood Vaccination Team drop-in session. The locations and times are listed below:

Please note these clinics can only accommodate pre-school children age 2 to 5 years and primary school aged children (only after a vaccination session has been held in the relevant school).

NHS Ayrshire & Arran Director of Public Health Lynne McNiven said:

Flu can be serious, even for otherwise healthy children. Thats why all 2 to 5-year-olds and school aged children are being offered the flu vaccine this winter. The flu virus is always changing, so your child needs to get the vaccine every year to make sure they have the best protection.

The vaccine is a quick, painless, nasal spray, and will just feel like a tickle in their nose. If your child has missed their appointment or you need to reschedule, you can head along to one of the drop-in sessions being run by our Childhood Vaccination Teams.

For more information about the childhood flu vaccine, visit http://www.nhsinform.scot/childflu or call:

ENDS

Background

For updates on drop-in seasonal flu vaccination clinics offered by the Childhood Vaccination Team please visit: https://www.nhsaaa.net/services/services-a-z/flu-vaccine/

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urges parents and carers to get children vaccinated against flu ... - NHS Ayrshire & Arran

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Immune imprinting and next-generation coronavirus vaccines - Nature.com

An illustration if the medication Beyfortus. (Credit: AstraZeneca)

After children were cooped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals last winter were overwhelmed by young patients with another respiratory disease: respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

In July, the Food and Drug Administration for the first time approved a shot, nirsevimab, that could prevent infants from contracting a severe case of RSV.

The problem is, the treatment is proving difficult for Chicago-area families to access. Some pediatric clinics simply dont have it to give.

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said manufacturers, who are making the immunization for the first time, underestimated demand.

What were seeing is, greater demand for that vaccine than any vaccine in child history, Cohen told WTTW News on Monday, when she was visiting a COVID-19 and flu vaccine clinic for seniors at the Martha Washington Apartments in North Center.

I personally have been talking with the companies that produce this, just to make sure we can accelerate as much of the production as possible because we want folks to get vaccinated, we want them to get protected, Cohen said. So, I understand the demand that is out there, and I know its frustrating for families.

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Sameer Vohra said its difficult to pinpoint the depth of the shortage, but he recognized demand outstrips supply.

Its difficult to measure right now, Vohra said.

The CDC recommends adults older than 60 get vaccinated for RSV, as well as those who are 32 to 36 weeks pregnant.

But Vohra said the scarcity is most impacting the immunizations for those eight months and under. Vohra said he spoke about it Monday during a meeting with Cohen, and that IDPH is having conversations with doctors offices and other health care providers that dont have enough of the treatment for families requesting it.

Were aiming for, you know, to work with parents and get a resolution as soon as possible, Vohra said. Some of that stuff is trying to get the manufacturers and the wholesalers to move and be able to ship, but you know, try to do it always as quickly, as efficiently as possible to get that treatment to our residents.

He hopes for a resolution within weeks, as the state is seeing a small increase in RSV cases.

We know that even one year ago by September, October, November we were seeing pediatric hospitals and ICU beds full, Vohra said. Right now, were fortunate to have pretty good capacity across the state still, and we just had a conversation last week with members of the chief medical officers across the state, and theyre pretty happy and right now theyre feeling like hospital capacity is holding.

The CDC director said she is hopeful availability will improve within week.

Theres more and more vaccine every day, every week getting out there, Cohen said.

Cohen recommends families call their pediatrician, and keep trying.

The supply problem is mostly impacting those with private insurance. Cohen said the CDCs Vaccines for Children program, serving those who are on Medicaid or are uninsured, has good availability as the government contracted for the infant RSV treatment ahead of time.

Were working really hard with the American Academy of Pediatrics and with these companies make sure that they can accelerate the vaccine, Cohen said.

She said last year was a particularly bad season for RSV because when they were in semi-isolation for COVID, children werent exposed to it; as regular living resumed, double the number of kids got exposed in the same season.

While bigger kids are probably going to be okay because by now theyve had exposure, Cohen said, babies under 8 months old have yet to experience an RSV season.

Thats why the shots are targeted at babies 6 to 8 months old and under. Theres also a priority order within that criterion. Medical professionals are prioritizing the infants most at-risk, including premature babies, infants with low weight and those with underlying conditions.

RSV can present as a cold, but can be life threatening for vulnerable babies and elderly individuals.

For the first time in history we have a vaccine for older adults and for our babies, Cohen said. We have the tools, we have to use them.

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Demand for Child RSV Vaccine Is Greatest in History, Health ... - WTTW News

The first confirmed case of Influenza A for this season was reported by the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit on November 1.

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I would encourage everyone to get their flu shot to protect themselves and their loved ones against influenza, said Dr. Joyce Lock, acting medical officer of health, said in a release. Anyone can get the flu, but it is particularly dangerous for the elderly, children, and those with compromised immune systems.

Article content

Commonly called the flu, influenza symptoms include fever, body aches, cough, and extreme exhaustion.

Transmission is most common through sneezing and coughing. The virus can live for several hours on hard surfaces such as door knobs and toys.

Washing your hands frequently, staying home when you or your child is ill, and coughing or sneezing into your upper arm sleeve are additional ways to reduce the risk of influenza infection.

Flu shots are available at health care provider offices and participating pharmacies throughout Ontario.

The health unit recommends people get the flu shot as soon as it becomes available because the vaccine can take up to two weeks to become effective.

Lock also recommends people get the COVID-19 booster if their previous vaccine or COVID infection was six months ago or more.

Additional information on the flu shot and influenza virus can be found online at hnhu.org/fall.

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Influenza A has arrived in Haldimand Norfolk - Stratford Beacon-Herald

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Flu season has arrived in the Rio Grande Valley as county health officials are beginning to see an uptick in cases.

Dr. Ivan Melendez, the Hidalgo County health authority, reassured that the increase is not out of the ordinary. In fact, Melendez explained that last year the county had seen a larger uptick that later leveled off as flu season continued.

Melendez confirmed that as of Friday afternoon, there are 22 people currently in the hospital with the flu and only 20 patients with COVID-19.

Its a bit of a first since the pandemic to see flu activity sending more people to the hospital than the coronavirus.

For the first time in a long time, we had more people in the hospital with flu than with COVID, Melendez said Friday.

Although he explained that in previous years the flu reached its max case numbers around January, in recent years, however, Melendez and his team have noticed something different occurring.

I think the patterns are changing after COVID, Melendez said, adding that recent weather changes from 100 degrees or more one day to a drastic drop in temperature another day may also play a role in case numbers.

However, there is no need to panic, he said.

According to Melendez, the current flu vaccine is effective in combating the influenza variant present in South Texas.

He is encouraging all Valley residents to get the flu shot.

If there is a disease and there is really no cure for it then all you can do is prevent it, and what better prevention than the vaccine, Melendez said.

For those looking for a place to receive their flu shot, visit sanofiflushots.com.

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Flu shots encouraged as cases overtake COVID in local hospitals - Brownsville Herald

As the United States heads into the cold-weather months, respiratory virus season has also arrived, with cases of influenza and COVID-19 likely to increase.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that everyone 6 months and older stay up-to-date and get a flu vaccine and a COVID vaccine, and that it's safe to get both at the same time.

"For flu and COVID, not only does the vaccine reduce...the chance of getting sick, it certainly - even for those people who get sick - reduces their chance of getting severely sick," Dr. Cameron Wolfe, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University School of Medicine, told ABC News.

Here's what you need to know about what vaccines are available, and who is eligible to receive them:

For COVID-19, there is an updated vaccine that's formulated to target variants that are currently circulating that are related to XBB, an offshoot of the Omicron variant.

There are formulations made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for those aged 6 months and older, and a formulation made by Novavax for those aged 12 and older.

"There's a different number of doses that you have to get depending on how many vaccines you've already received in the past," Dr. Shivanjali Shankaran, an associate professor in the department of internal medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Rush University in Chicago, told ABC News.

For those who are between 6 months and 4 years old, the CDC recommends getting two doses of Moderna or three doses of Pfizer if they are unvaccinated. If they've been previously vaccinated, the CDC recommends one or two doses of Moderna or Pfizer, depending on the previous number of doses.

For those aged 5 to 11, the CDC recommends one dose of either Moderna or Pfizer, regardless of previous vaccination status.

When it comes to Americans aged 12 and older, it's recommended that those who are unvaccinated receive one dose of Pfizer or Moderna or two doses of Novavax. Those who have been previously vaccinated are recommended to receive one dose of the Pfizer, Moderna or Novavax updated vaccine.

Those who are moderately or severely immunocompromised may require more doses.

"There's the gain for any individual by taking the vaccine and there's the most gain for people who are immunosuppressed, have heart or lung conditions, or older adults," Wolfe told ABC News. "You know, if you're a 25-year-old who lives with a patient who's had a lung transplant, this is not a bad thing for you to get. In fact, it would be highly encouraged."

For the majority of those aged 6 months and older, the CDC recommends receiving the standard quadrivalent flu vaccine, which protects against four different strains of the virus. If this is an infant or child's first time getting a flu vaccination they should get two doses this season, each at least four weeks apart.

However, for those who are aged 65 and older, the CDC recommends getting one of three vaccines: the high-dose flu shot, the adjuvanted flu shot, or the recombinant flu vaccine, all of which are quadrivalent.

The high-dose shot contains four times the amount of antigen - that is, the protein molecule identified with the virus - to trigger a stronger immune response, while the recombinant shot contains three times the amount of antigen. The adjuvanted shot is made with an ingredient - an adjuvant - that helps create an even stronger immune response.

"There is a broadly available shot, of course, [ but] there is a high-dose vaccine that's a stronger dose and provides that additional protection, because those who are older in age have more of a challenge to mount an effective response. So getting that high-dose shot or adjuvant is important, because it can provide that critical protection," said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and ABC News contributor.

Traditionally, flu vaccines are made using an egg-based manufacturing process, so if someone has an egg allergy they can instead receive the cell-culture-based flu vaccine, which uses influenza viruses grown in cell cultures rather than in eggs. However, the CDC says the standard vaccine should be safe to receive, even for those allergic to eggs.

"The flu vaccines that are available this year are safe to be taken if you do have an underlying egg allergy," Shankaran said. "As long as someone can monitor you, which I think most places do, anyway."

There is also a nasal spray flu vaccine, made with a live modified virus, which can be given to those between ages 2 and 49. It's specifically not recommended for those who are immunosuppressed or pregnant.

Health officials typically suggest getting the flu shot by Halloween but stress that it's never too late, because the flu season can last into the spring months.

In addition to the vaccines that are now available, there are several clinical trials for both flu and COVID vaccines that are currently undergoing clinical trials.

This includes a flu vaccine from Pfizer using mRNA technology, which was used to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. There's also an mRNA universal flu vaccine, developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center.

Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are also all working to develop a combination COVID-19 and flu vaccine that would offer protection from both viruses in a single shot.

"I do think that having a combo shot - if the clinical data suggests that it's safe and effective, clearly - will be more appealing to people to have things available in a single shot as opposed to multiple shots, especially if it's challenging for people now that they're trying to chase both COVID and flu vaccines, and maybe not always available at the same time," said Brownstein. "It creates convenience, and potentially just more ease of administration overall, and hopefully reduced costs."

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What's latest to know about COVID, flu vaccines as respiratory virus season begins? - WPVI-TV