While COVID-19 is raging, we have seen one story after another about the flu being almost completely eliminated during the usual flu season, usually from late autumn to winter. In fact, the incidence of many winter diseases last winter was much lower, which led some people to speculate that the number of COVID cases was fabricated using influenza cases as COVID cases.
After talking with many health professionals, what we may see are actually countless health precautions against the new coronavirus, which actually inhibited the spread of the virus in the usual winter.
The doctor’s office is looking at the case influenza, Standard Edition, And other diseases that usually appear in colder areas of the year, and the numbers are rising across the country. Since our entire country has spent the winter wearing masks, using a lot of hand sanitizer, and basically living the most hygienic life due to fear of a pandemic, more common diseases have no chance of spreading as usual.
And because people no longer go to the doctor’s office for health checks during the peak of the pandemic, we are likely to see the distribution of flu doses stagnating or even decreasing (CDC nothing now There are numbers of flu vaccine doses for 2020-2021). Therefore, the number of people receiving the flu vaccine this year may decrease.
Therefore, with the increase in the number of flu cases and other diseases, doctors’ offices—especially pediatric clinics—are being hit hard by cases. I have even heard that some places are sometimes understaffed because doctors and nurses themselves are now being affected by this. The virus attacked fiercely. This is a bit problematic, especially after dealing with the pandemic for more than a year.
The good news is that the COVID-19 vaccine seems to be more than just fighting the virus. This prompted researchers to push the research of mRNA vaccines into the fight against other diseases.
by edge:
The efficiency of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine produced by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech is Main endorsement For this type of vaccine. Now, pharmaceutical companies plan to use this technology to fight other types of infectious diseases, including influenza.The annual flu vaccine available in the U.S. is usually between 40% and 60% Effective. The most common injection is to grow the flu virus in cells or eggs and then kill the virus to make it no longer dangerous. It takes a long time for the virus to grow, so the company must start vaccinating about six months in advance based on the forecast of which influenza virus strain will be circulating that year.
Pharmaceutical companies hope that mRNA-based influenza vaccines can be more effective than traditional vaccines. Because they will be manufactured faster, they do not have to be produced so long in advance, and in theory they can be more matched with the type of flu that is spread in each season.
Moderna is the second organization to start testing its mRNA influenza vaccine in human trials. Sanofi and Translate Bio The trial began this summer.Pfizer and BioNTech have always been interested in mRNA flu vaccines Some years, They are advancing these plans and also.
This is a very good thing for the future of national vaccines. One thing that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have shown us is that even against variants of the original virus, their efficacy is still very high. Therefore, if mRNA vaccines are 40-60% more effective than the usual 40-60% and can better fight against virus mutations, then even if we are not in a global pandemic, we can see that the number of these viruses remains at a low level.
We will not restore the requirement to wear masks just because of the flu, and most politicians now realize that they can’t even make mask wearers insist on wearing masks again. However, some other health precautions we have been taking for ourselves (more use of hand sanitizer, better hand washing, etc.) will greatly ease this strange summer flu season.
At the same time, the prospects for vaccination are very bright, which is definitely something to be celebrated.
