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Once the doors start to open and people venture out without taking a year of Covid-19 precautions, it is possible that new strains of the flu will circulate that scientists did not anticipate, Cody said. Meissner, infectious disease specialist and pediatrician at Tufts. Children’s hospital which is also on the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee. Without a sufficiently powerful vaccine, the country exhausted by the pandemic could experience a severe flu season as it emerges from the fight against the coronavirus.
“We can have a combination of weak public health measures at the population level with a vaccine of low efficacy. And then you could have a raging flu season next year, ”said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University.
Concerns about the ripple effects of the terrifyingly calm flu season emerged earlier this month at a meeting of the Food and Drug Administration’s independent vaccine advisory committee. While experts suggested there were lessons to be learned from last year’s flu season that could help prevent high flu rates in the years to come, they also struggled to predict what. next winter could bring.
“What we asked them at that meeting was, ‘Has there ever been a moment like this?’ Where there was very little flu circulating, then you can pass judgment on what happened the following year, but it is truly unprecedented, ”said Paul Offit, vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and FDA member. sign.
The flu is already a difficult virus to track, Gostin said, because it mutates faster than other familiar viruses such as measles. The act of rapid change in influenza creates several strains each year.
The process of predicting which influenza strains will predominate in each influenza season is a global effort. The World Health Organization brings together experts twice a year to predict flu strains – once each for the northern and southern hemispheres – based on data collected by labs around the world. They include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is one of the six WHO “collaborating centers” for influenza research.
At the Northern Hemisphere meeting in February, experts look at the strains then circulating in the Southern Hemisphere as fall approaches – and use that information to interpret which strains might strike the northern part of the globe. months later. In the United States, the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee reviews these recommendations and makes a final decision on the composition of influenza vaccines the agency will approve.
Kawsar Talaat, a scientist at Johns Hopkins with expertise in infectious diseases, said experts are monitoring how the virus progresses throughout the season and which strains are dominant towards the end of the season.
There are few precedents for the most recent influenza season in the United States. The 2011-12 flu season set records for the lowest and shortest flu peak, according to the CDC. The numbers from the last season are still only a third of the rate for the 2011-12 season, the agency reports.
That previous low year did not appear to have led to a particularly bad flu season in 2012-13, Talaat said, adding that the vaccine’s effectiveness that year was on par or better than most years. She said it was too early to know what the flu season will look like next fall or to predict how likely the flu vaccine is to work.
“In 2011-2012, we had virtually no influenza season and it happens year after year. And then last year we had a three-part, three-peak flu season, which was also very unusual. The biology of influenza is therefore a fascinating subject, ”Talaat said.
Offit said the low levels of the virus this season still allowed the FDA advisory committee to choose strains for a vaccine and that he was not worried about the vaccine for next fall.
“The belief is that there was enough virus in circulation to be able to pick out what is likely to be the strains that are associated with next year’s flu epidemic,” Offit said.
The flu was not the only winter respiratory virus in low numbers this season. Respiratory syncytial virus levels were also dropping, Offit said. The disappearance of winter respiratory viruses is leading health experts to question whether Covid-19 mitigation strategies could become a necessary tool to fight them every year.
“I mean, could we reasonably in a winter month wear masks at least when we’re out in a big crowd?” Said Offit. “Have we learned this or are we ready to do it, or are we comfortable having hundreds of thousands of cases of influenza hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths? I suspect the answer is B. We are comfortable with it, we are prepared that even if we have just learned there is a way to prevent it.
People are ready for life to get back to normal, Gostin said, and fatigue from the Covid-19 pandemic could cause people to abandon masking and social distancing at the right time for the flu.
“Remember after the 1918 influenza pandemic most people don’t realize what happened after the end. But what happened was the Roaring Twenties, ”Gostin said. “People started to come together, to mix, to kiss. All the things they missed. They crowded into theaters and stadiums and returned to the church. This is what is likely to happen this fall and it makes the flu virus very happy. “
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