By: Mason Rosse
We are in the height of flu season right now, and doctors are ready to use vaccinations at any moment. How do doctors find the right vaccine before the flu season has even started? Every year, as they prepare for the flu (which is typically from December to February), they create a vaccine. To do their job they need to try to hypothesize which type of flu will be most prominent.
Vaccines are essentially just a dead strand of the virus, meant to build up one’s immune system, they have to get it perfect for the vaccine to work. And because the flu types are constantly changing, this process is very difficult. Every year, more than 100 national influenza centers conduct surveillance to try to predict the strand of flu that they need, mentioned The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in a recent article. In the article they explain, “Flu viruses are constantly changing, so the vaccine composition is reviewed each year and updated as needed based on which influenza viruses are making people sick, the extent to which those viruses are spreading, and how well the previous season’s vaccine protects against those viruses.” This is only part of it all because there are three factors that play into how well the vaccine works, such as a patients age/health and how severe the strand is. There are so many factors going into these vaccines, and often we hear stories of the vaccines failing. This is partially true in the 2017-18 flu season, there was around 40% success rate. However, when compared to the 10% success rate in 2004-5 you can see there have been large improvements to how successful the vaccine is. These advances are very important to the medical community.
So, the next time you get a flu shot, think about the work and effort that went into it, and maybe you can impress the pharmacist with your knowledge of how the vaccine is created each year.
Article By CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/vaccine-selection.htm