[ad_1]
- In a new study, researchers say that a low flu vaccination rate in certain parts of the United States does not bode well for this year’s flu season.
- They add that the trend could also affect the number of people who are willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 once a vaccine for that disease is available.
- They note that the combination of flu and COVID-19 could affect health services this fall.
Very few people in the United States generally get the flu vaccine to achieve “herd immunity.”
That is the point where enough people in a population are immune to a disease, so that the spread of that disease in the community slows or disappears.
That is discouraging news for the upcoming flu season and may also not bode well for the ability to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19, a disease for which there is no vaccine currently available.
A new study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found that self-reported flu vaccination rates were as low as 16 percent among the uninsured.
The researchers noted that insurance status, having a personal physician, and age were among the top determining factors for Americans receiving an annual flu shot.
The study also noted that less than half of American adults received the flu vaccine during the 2017-2018 season, when 61,000 Americans died from the flu.
“To achieve herd immunity, we would need to achieve an 80 percent vaccination rate, but no subgroup in our study exceeded 60 percent,” said Dr. R. Adams Dudley, lead study author and professor of medicine at the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and School of Medicine. It is also associated with the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, and the Institute for Health Informatics.
According to Dudley and his colleagues, flu vaccination rates varied widely based on demographics and other factors. For example:
- Twenty-two percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 got the flu vaccine compared to 59 percent of those 75 and older.
- 16 percent of Americans without insurance were vaccinated compared to 42 percent of those with insurance.
- 19 percent of people without a personal physician reported receiving a flu vaccine in 2018, compared with 44 percent of those with a personal physician
- 32 percent of people without chronic illnesses were vaccinated compared to 53 percent of people with four or more chronic illnesses.
- Thirty-four percent of people with a household income of less than $ 15,000 were vaccinated, compared with 42 percent of those with an income greater than $ 50,000.
Women (42 percent) were more likely to get a flu shot than men (37 percent), while vaccination rates were lower among blacks and Hispanics (34 percent and 29 percent) than among whites and Asians (42 percent and 38 percent).
Vaccination rates also varied widely by region, from a low of 26 percent in Texas to a high of 44 percent in Washington, DC.
Dudley said that some of the measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as the use of masks, hand washing and physical distancing, should also help prevent the spread of seasonal flu.
“COVID-19 will likely encourage more people to get the flu vaccine,” Brandon Yan, first author of the study and a health policy researcher at UCSF, told Healthline.
“However, in-person health care visits have fallen dramatically in favor of remote visits, especially in primary care, during the pandemic, so opportunities for flu vaccine administration will be much more limited. . This is where the wide availability of the flu vaccine outside of traditional clinics, such as supermarket pharmacies, is especially critical. “
However, Dr. Faisel Syed, national director of primary care for ChenMed, which operates primary care medical practices for seniors in 10 states, said the US response to COVID-19 may make it less likely. get people vaccinated against the flu this year. .
“Right now, there is a lack of trust in our health care systems,” Syed told Healthline. “I can’t imagine with all the misinformation about COVID-19 that it will somehow increase someone’s desire for a flu shot.”
Protesters took to the streets over the weekend in Massachusetts, for example, after state officials ordered influenza vaccination for all students returning to school this fall.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced a goal of vaccinating 65 percent of Americans against the flu in a bid to establish herd immunity and prevent a major flu outbreak in addition to the COVID pandemic. -19.
“This fall, nothing can be more important than trying to increase the American public’s resolve to adopt the flu vaccine with confidence,”
“This is a critical year for us to try to eliminate the flu as much as we can.”
Redfield previously stated that the combination of flu and COVID-19 could make Fall 2020 the worst experienced in the United States from a public health perspective.
“COVID-19 has exceeded our resources beyond what we were prepared to handle,” Syed said. “It won’t take long flu season to push a healthcare system that is already on the brink.”
However, Dr. Charles C. Bailey, medical director for infection prevention at St. Joseph Hospital and Mission Hospital in Southern California, told Healthline that COVID-19 could make the public “take the risk of influenza more seriously, which should benefit compliance with vaccination and other preventive measures ”.
The annual flu season generally begins in October and peaks between December and January. Bailey said that between COVID-19 related precautions and lessons learned in the healthcare system, a ‘bad flu season’ doesn’t appear to be evolving so far.
Achieving a 65 percent vaccination rate, as the CDC wants, would be unprecedented. But it would still be on the lower end of what would be required to achieve herd immunity against influenza.
Similary,
Frank Sloan, PhD, co-author of the study and a health economist at the Sanford School of Public Health at Duke University in North Carolina, cautioned that herd immunity “has probably never been achieved with respect to the flu,” although it has succeeded for some other infectious diseases. “
The study authors called for a concerted public health campaign to increase flu vaccination rates, especially among at-risk populations identified in their research.
“Flu vaccines should be available without a significant time commitment from the potential recipient,” Sloan said.
“Employers should provide them. Pharmacies should be encouraged to promote them. There have been improvements in this score. More pharmacies are located in supermarkets where people buy food than before. “
The researchers said educational campaigns are needed to overcome myths about the risks of vaccines. They added that mandatory vaccination should be considered in certain settings, such as for the school population and in the workplace.
The Washington Post reported this week that Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a neuroradiologist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California and a member of the Trump administration’s COVID-19 task force, has been advocating for the United States to change its mind. a prevention and containment strategy. to allow the new coronavirus to spread in an effort to achieve herd immunity.
That would be a fatal mistake, Sloan said.
“We don’t want to achieve herd immunity to COVID without an effective vaccine,” he told Healthline. “There would be too many deaths on the way.”
