CDC warns against a projected severe flu season; urges Americans to get flu shot

ATLANTA — Early data suggests that the current 2014-15 flu season could be severe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. 

 

“It’s too early to say for sure that this will be a severe flu season, but Americans should be prepared,” stated CDC director Tom Frieden. “We can save lives with a three-pronged effort to fight the flu: vaccination, prompt treatment for people at high risk of complications and preventive health measures, such as staying home when you’re sick, to reduce flu spread.”

 

So far this year, seasonal influenza A H3N2 viruses have been most common. There often are more severe flu illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths during seasons when these viruses predominate. And the ability for this year's influenza vaccine to protect against the A H3N2 variants may be reduced, the agency reported. 

 

 

Increasing the risk of a severe flu season is the finding that roughly half of the H3N2 viruses analyzed are drift variants: viruses with antigenic or genetic changes that make them different from that season’s vaccine virus. This means the vaccine’s ability to protect against those viruses may be reduced, although vaccinated people may have a milder illness if they do become infected. During the 2007-2008 flu season, the predominant H3N2 virus was a drift variant, yet the vaccine had an overall efficacy of 37% and 42% against H3N2 viruses.

 

The agency urges immediate vaccination for anyone still unvaccinated this season and recommends prompt treatment with antiviral drugs for people at high risk of complications who develop flu. Depending on the formulation, flu vaccines protect against three or four different flu viruses. Even during a season when the vaccine is only partially protective against one flu virus, it can protect against the others.

 

“While the vaccine’s ability to protect against drifted H3N2 viruses this season may be reduced, we are still strongly recommending vaccination,” said Joseph Bresee, chief of the Influenza Epidemiology and Prevention Branch at the CDC. “Vaccination has been found to provide some protection against drifted viruses in past seasons. Also, vaccination will offer protection against other flu viruses that may become more common later in the season.”

 

H3N2 viruses were predominant during the 2012-2013, 2007-2008 and 2003-2004 seasons, the three seasons with the highest mortality levels in the past decade. All were characterized as “moderately severe.”

 

Influenza viruses are constantly changing. The drifted H3N2 viruses were first detected in late March 2014, after World Health Organization recommendations for the 2014-2015 Northern Hemisphere vaccine had been made in mid-February. At that time, a very small number of these viruses had been found among the thousands of specimens that had been collected and tested.

 

Influenza activity is currently low in the United States as a whole, but is increasing in parts of the country. “We are just at the beginning of the season. It’s not too late to get your vaccine,” Frieden said.