(U-WIRE) The influenza epidemic is expected to grow even worse as this year’s flu vaccine fails to protect against most common strains.
According to the Center for Disease Control Web site, the flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year’s flu viruses, a 30 percent to 50 percent drop compared to previous years.
According to a nurse at the Healthpoint Medical Clinic in Normal, creating a new flu vaccine to treat this year’s strains can take a very long time, and probably will not be available for patients this year. Healthpoint has been experiencing a large increase of patients coming in with the flu in recent weeks.
ISU’s Student Health Services has been experiencing a similar occurrence.
“For the past two weeks, we have had a big influx of students coming in with the flu. We have a bump in cases every year, but this is unusual because it’s the second week of February,” Dr. Glenn Weiss, medical director at Student Health Services, said.
“It’s on the upswing, but it’s delayed compared to most years. Talking to the other doctors, I would say that more than a third of our incoming patients have flu,” Weiss added.
Creating a new vaccine includes taking three strains of the flu, two from the Type A family of influenza, and one from Type B. Experts then predict which strains will spread, so they can develop a vaccine for the subsequent season. Experts keep two of the A strains because that strain tends to cause more severe symptoms in patients.
“It’s an interesting dilemma, experts have to guess, and sometimes they don’t do as well as other years. Some years they’re highly accurate, and people are fully protected. Other years, they don’t get it exactly right,” Weiss said.
“They’re usually close, but they may not have the exact strain, and the mismatch can cause you to get the vaccine, and still get influenza,” Weiss added.
Weiss still recommends that people get the vaccine. He says that most doctors believe that even if the vaccine doesn’t match the strain exactly, it might give partial immunity. Patients may not get as bad a case of it.
According to the Center for Disease Control Web site, this year’s Type B vaccine was not a good match for the most common virus this winter. The Type A vaccine turned out to be inadequately suited for the Type A H3N2/Brisbane strain that is most common among lab cases this season. The Brisbane strain has been known to cause more deaths than any other flu strain.
The amount of influenza cases, as well as the number of children who have died from the flu, has been steadily rising in recent weeks. The proportion of deaths attributed to influenza was above the epidemic level for the fifth consecutive week.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 47.6 percent of specimens tested in the last three weeks in East North Central region of the U.S, including Illinois, were positive for influenza.
According to Weiss, from a physician’s standpoint, if every patient is coming in with exactly the same symptoms, most tend to stop testing and assume it’s a trend in similar diagnosis. So in reality, the numbers of flu cases might be relatively bigger than what they’re actually reporting.
