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Regarding recommendations, regardless of the coronavirus epidemic, all developed countries consider the administration of the influenza vaccine important. In this sense, the United States leads where
Above 6 months, vaccination is recommended for practically the entire population, and in several cases it is mandatory.
The US recommendation changed in 2020 only to recommend that the flu vaccine be given earlier than before to achieve full protection at the time of the epidemic. The duration of this is approximately 21 days after vaccination.
More interestingly, several American employers are making vaccination mandatory for their employees, for a variety of reasons. Banner Health Systems, one of the nation’s largest healthcare providers on the West Coast, operating 29 hospitals in six states, for example, has been banning employees from getting a flu shot for 9 years. The vaccine is provided free of charge by the employer. So far, only very few very specific exemptions have been granted, as in the case of egg allergies, but more recently this has not been a reason for exclusion, as there are vaccines that contain negligible or zero egg white.
It’s worth noting here that the United States ranks highly in terms of vaccinating the entire population,
almost half of the population, about 150 million people, get vaccinated against influenza each year.
In Hungary, during the 2009/10 swine flu pandemic, vaccination points were established to carry out mass vaccinations as quickly and easily as possible. This is still the case today, but there are none at the moment, for example, the ideas of the government and the capital do not coincide on this issue. In the United States, by contrast, virtually anywhere you can get vaccinated, nearly every grocery store and drug store has its own vaccination point, and most public or private health insurers provide the vaccine for free.
The Hungarian situation within the Union is also interesting. In terms of recommendations, we are roughly in the middle. Before Covid, it recommended vaccination in most Member States over 65, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Iceland and Hungary over 60, Malta and Poland over 55 and Ireland and Belgium over 50 .
It is recommended by all EU Member States according to the national recommendation.
- vaccination of people with chronic lung, heart, kidney and metabolic diseases,
- as well as acquired or congenital weakness of the immune system for any reason.
- According to the ECDC (European Epidemiology Center), influenza vaccination of pregnant women is recommended in 28 of the 30 surveyed Member States, including Hungary.
- while for health workers in 29 out of 30 Member States it is highly recommended (Denmark is the exception).
Mandatory, however, has not existed before. Therefore, the recommendations are similar across Europe, but their implementation varies widely. Vaccination of 75% of the elderly, that is, the relevant EU or ECDC target, was achieved practically only in the UK, and Hungary is in the beaten field, only the Baltic States and Slovakia and Slovenia were exceeded by Member States data.
Among the arguments against vaccination, it is often heard that one gets sick after receiving the vaccine, which of course is attributed to the vaccination. However, the coincidence in time cannot almost certainly be considered a causal relationship here, because the vaccine contains a killed virus, which in Hungarian is not viable and infectious, or is a part of the virus that cannot cause infection.
Proponents of free vaccination generally believe that drug makers want to ditch last year’s stock left on their necks, which is a mistake because each year the WHO issues a new flu-specific recommendation to manufacturers on the composition of the vaccine, which is the rarest. case is repeated. For example, this year, the recommended virus strains are:
- A / Guangdong-Maonan / SWL1536 / 2019 (H1N1) pdm09 virus,
- A / Hong Kong / 2671/2019 (H3N2) -as virus,
- B / Washington / 02/2019 (B / Victoria lineage) -as a virus,
neither of which is the same as last year’s vaccine viruses.
Cover Image: Rick Friedman / Corbis via Getty Image
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