FOCUS: FLU SEASON
Vaccine readily available as flu season begins
Health officials suggest immunizations include school-age children
The first confirmed case of the flu appeared in the region at the end of November, the sign that the virus has arrived. It’s not clear yet what kind of flu season this winter will be.
“Right now, we’re in that smoldering stage,” said Dr. Thomas Raab of Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo. “We don’t know when we will see the surge in cases in the community.”
But manufacturers produced ample supplies of vaccine, so anyone who wants vaccine should be able to get it.
Public health officials also say they believe the strains of the virus in the vaccines represent a good match for the major strains in circulation, meaning immunization should provide good protection.
The biggest change this year is the recommendation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the nation’s roughly 30 million school-age children ages 5 through 18 get immunized.
Children ages 6 months through 59 months were included in past recommendations, as part of a gradual strategy over the years to expand the number of people vaccinated in the United States.
“This is like a trial year for universal pediatric immunization because it’s new, but it’s an important step toward preventing sickness and transmission of the virus,” said Dr. Richard Judelsohn, medical director in Erie County’s Health Department and a private-practice pediatrician.
Other groups for whom a flu shot is recommended are: pregnant women, people 50 and older, individuals of any age with chronic medical conditions, nursing home residents, health care workers and household members in contact with babies and others at high risk for complications from the flu.
The expanded recommendation for school-age children is based on research showing that flu is common among children and that they serve as key transmitters of the virus.
Although no one tracks every flu case, health officials estimate that influenza annually kills about 36,000 Americans, mostly the elderly, and hospitalizes more than 200,000 people.
Manufacturers have projected that as many as 146 million doses of influenza vaccine, a record supply, will be produced for the United States this flu season, according to the CDC.
The viruses that cause influenza constantly mutate, changing enough year to year to require regular updating of the vaccine. So predicting the timing and severity of the annual epidemic of cases is difficult.
So far, in 2008, the level of flu activity in the United States and New York State is non-existent or sporadic, meaning only isolated cases. In New York, sporadic cases have been detected in 12 counties, including Erie.
But this doesn’t mean illness isn’t around. Many people suffer from respiratory ailments caused by other viruses.
“The common cold is everywhere. We’re seeing it in our employees, patients and their family members,” said Raab, chairman of the department of medicine at Mercy Hospital.
Based on flu activity around the world, the World Health Organization’s Influenza Surveillance Network each year chooses three virus strains for the vaccine that are likely to predominate in the Northern Hemisphere.
The viruses used in the vaccines are dead or, in the case of nasal-spray flu vaccine, inactivated so that they can’t cause illness. About two weeks after vaccination, infection-fighting antibodies develop in the body.
Choosing the virus strains is an educated guess because vaccine must be produced long before the flu arrives.
If the choice is on target, the vaccine is 70 percent to 90 percent effective in preventing the flu in healthy people under age 65, according to the CDC. Last year, the match was only 44 percent effective.
Vaccine is available at annual public flu immunization clinics and from private physicians, although Judelsohn said it’s not uncommon for doctors to avoid reordering supplies once they run out for fear of being stuck with unused doses.
The big flu clinics are nearing the end of their schedules but have plentiful supplies. Independent Nursing Care, for instance, has vaccinated more than 50,000 people already this year.
“It’s been very smooth. There have been no issues with supplies of vaccine, gloves or syringes,” said Mark Gemerek, administrator of the company.
He said the clinics seemed to attract more first-timers than usual this year.
Abby Pudhorodsky, of Buffalo, falls somewhat into that category. She stopped by an Independent Nursing Care clinic Thursday in the McKinley Mall for a shot.
“It’s the first time for me in a long time,” she said. “I’m thinking about starting a family and had a really bad cold last year, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”
In addition to vaccination, experts say the best way to prevent the flu is to take such basic steps as frequent hand-washing and covering coughs or sneezes to keep germs from spreading.
Other flu-related issues are worth noting:
• Google has started tracking the flu — not by the number of actual cases but by the popularity of certain search queries.
The search engine’s researchers found that Google can estimate flu in each state, in near real time, by tracking search terms of its millions of users. This could be useful for early detection of outbreaks because traditional flu tracking can take more than a week to collect data.
Google Flu Trends can be found at www.google.org/flutrends . • Debate continues over the benefits of the universal vaccination strategy for the elderly.
Despite increases in vaccination rates in seniors, sickness and death from flu remain high, according to a recent report in the journal of the nonprofit Public Library of Science.
One reason may be the decline of the body’s immune system as people age. It may also be that the effectiveness of vaccination has been overestimated in seniors, the authors said.
• Flu vaccination rates remain low for children, according to CDC survey results.
About 21 percent of children 6 months to 23 months were fully vaccinated with two doses in the 2006-07 flu season, and 16.5 percent of children 24 months and 59 months were fully vaccinated.
Adult influenza vaccination coverage has trended upward since the 1992-93 season, except for a drop in 2004-05 caused by an influenza vaccine shortage. The 2006-07 season saw coverage nearly return to 2003-04 levels, the CDC reported.
For ages 18 through 49, vaccination coverage was 35.1 percent among people with conditions that put them at high risk of flu complications and 23.4 percent among others. For those 50 through 64, vaccination coverage was 54.2 percent for those with high-risk conditions and 37.9 percent for those without.
The findings underscore the need to increase interest in and access to influenza vaccination for more children, CDC officials wrote in their report.
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