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Due to the pandemic, doctors recommend getting vaccinated against seasonal flu this fall. But how does that help? Are there enough doses of vaccine for everyone? The most important questions and answers at a glance.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health, vaccination is the best protection against the flu.
Next winter is likely to be a challenge for the healthcare system. The sharp increase in Covid 19 patients is already causing the number of hospital admissions to rise again. With fall, the annual flu season is also approaching. If many flu sufferers seek medical help in January, the healthcare system threatens to become overloaded.
Therefore, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) recently launched its national influenza vaccination campaign. But what good is a vaccine? And does it really help contain the consequences of the corona pandemic? The most important answers at a glance:
The flu is not always harmless. Particularly at risk are groups of people such as infants, premature infants up to two years of age, people 65 and older, pregnant women, or people with a chronic illness. For them, the flu can lead to serious complications, such as bacterial pneumonia or myocarditis.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), an annual flu vaccine offers the best protection against infection or illness. It not only protects the vaccinated person, but to a certain extent also their environment and therefore also people at increased risk of complications. Unfortunately, the effect of the vaccine is very different each year.
First of all, it must be stated: Conventional flu vaccines do not offer any protection against the coronavirus. This is new and different from influenza viruses. That is why you need your own vaccine to fight it.
However, a flu virus vaccine is highly recommended, especially in times of corona. The symptoms of seasonal flu can hardly be distinguished from those of Covid-19. Fever, cough, or muscle pain can equally occur in both cases. With a flu vaccine, at least in most cases, a flu illness can be ruled out beforehand. At least if the effect of the vaccine is good this year.
In addition, patients at risk with Covid-19 are practically the same as with seasonal flu. People over 65, pregnant women, and people with a weakened immune system or previous illness are at special risk. Capacities in the health care system would also be reduced by severe courses of influenza.
During the corona pandemic, flu vaccination is intended to prevent thousands of people with flu from overloading doctor and hospital offices, in addition to suspected corona cases. According to Infovac, an information platform on vaccination issues, between 100,000 and more than 300,000 people in Switzerland visit a doctor each winter due to flu-like illnesses. The fewer cases of flu there are, the fewer queues in front of corona testing centers and the more capabilities there should be in the health system for severe Covid 19 courses.
The flu vaccine is especially important for people who are at higher risk for a severe course. These include people 65 and older, pregnant women, people who have a weak immune system or chronic diseases, and healthcare workers who have a lot of professional contact with other people. Vaccination is also recommended for children, as they are the main transmitters of the influenza virus.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s flu vaccination is not only recommended for risk groups and healthcare workers. Several experts, including the head of the crown federal task force, Matthias Egger, recommend that as many people as possible be vaccinated.
Vaccination against influenza is possible at the family doctor and, since 2015, also in pharmacies with permission for vaccination against influenza.
According to the Swiss Association of Pharmacists Pharmasuisse, adults can now be vaccinated directly in almost all cantons at a vaccination pharmacy. No registration required. Only in the cantons of Appenzell-Innerrhoden and Appenzell-Ausserrhoden is vaccination advice only possible, as there pharmacists lack the legal basis for a vaccination. In Ticino, a prescription is required for vaccination. The approximately 1,000 vaccination pharmacies are listed at www.impfapotheke.ch.
Production for this year’s flu vaccination was planned ahead of the corona pandemic. Since it is time consuming, a certain delivery time is required. Therefore, it is not possible to increase production in the short term.
There are no exact figures on stocks. The market for non-pandemic vaccines, including seasonal flu vaccines, is subject to the free market economy. The federal government itself does not purchase vaccine doses, but according to the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) it is in contact with manufacturers so that they can make additional doses available for the Swiss vaccine market. According to the BAG, around 2.5 million doses of vaccines would be needed in the Corona year. However, according to estimates, only about two-thirds of this amount is available. As in previous years, this year about 1.2 million doses of vaccine were ordered. These are delivered to clinics, hospitals, homes and pharmacies in October and November. However, the BAG assumes that sufficient doses of flu vaccine will be available by the end of December, as it says upon request. An additional 550,000 cans will be delivered to the Swiss market in December.
However, there are already reports that the flu vaccine is running out. Both the BAG and the MFE family and the pediatrician association confirm upon request that individual pharmacies and doctors’ offices no longer have vaccine doses available or that they would have to wait longer for delivery this year.
The Swiss Association of Pharmacists Pharmasuisse does not have specific inventories of Swiss pharmacies, as stated on request. However, the association estimates that the approximately 1,000 vaccination pharmacies in Switzerland can meet the demand. Most pharmacies ordered vaccination doses from the beginning. However, there could be a bottleneck for some. For example, the canton of Aargau, where pharmacies can only vaccinate since October 1, has only had limited opportunities to purchase vaccination doses.
Pharmacies in Basel have already reported bottlenecks. According to Lydia Isler-Christ, president of the Basel Pharmacists Association, the demand is huge. “We currently need as many doses of vaccines in a week as we normally need in a month.” Although they were expecting higher demand this year, he says, “we didn’t expect us to be so overwhelmed.”
According to Isler-Christ, the Basel-Stadt and Baselland pharmacies ordered a total of one and a half times more vaccine doses than usual. There will be another charge in November. You don’t know if this will be enough. He fears that there will not be enough doses for everyone who wants to get vaccinated this year. The Swiss Association of Family Physicians and Pediatricians MFE also has this concern. At the start of vaccinations in November, they deliberately want to give preference to people at risk in the first two weeks.
The best time to get a flu shot is from October to mid-December at the latest. This leaves enough time for the body’s immune system to develop vaccination protection before the start of the flu season. This can take up to 14 days. In Switzerland, the flu epidemic does not usually start before the end of December, but it is usually not until January.
Since the vaccination only works for nine to twelve months, the vaccination must be repeated annually.
The flu is caused by viruses. They are versatile and constantly changing. Therefore, each year a new vaccine must be developed that is effective against influenza viruses in the following season. Therefore, the effectiveness of a vaccine also depends on whether the virus strains it contains are as close as possible to current influenza viruses.
If there is a good match, the protective effect in young adults is 80 percent. In older people, in whom the immune system usually no longer works as effectively as in younger people, the risk of getting the flu can be reduced by about 50 percent on average. In people who get the flu despite being vaccinated, the illness is usually much milder and with fewer complications than in people who have not been vaccinated.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) promotion of influenza vaccination, the risk of serious side effects from vaccination is low. Therefore, the risk of serious complications from the flu is much higher.
The most common side effects are redness or pain at the injection site. They occur in about 10 to 40 percent of those vaccinated. 5 to 10 percent also experience a rise in temperature, muscle pain, or mild discomfort. These side effects are harmless and will go away without treatment after a few days at most.
In very rare cases, rashes, edema or breathing difficulties may occur in case of allergy and, very rarely, an immediate allergic reaction (anaphylactic shock).
This is bad. A flu vaccine does not carry an increased risk of developing the coronavirus more easily or severely.
However, there is widespread concern, especially among those who oppose vaccination, that the risk of developing severe Covid-19 disease increases with flu vaccination. Austrian physician Ruediger Dahlke, who is also considered a supporter of conspiracy theories, fueled this concern. He stated that, according to the British government, those vaccinated against influenza over 65 years were at the same level as those “recently transplanted” and “seriously ill with cancer.”
The German news agency DPA has verified this statement and classified it as factually incorrect. In fact, Dahlke misquoted influenza expert Jonathan Van-Tam, who has taken over as Deputy Medical Director in England since 2017. In March, he was asked on the “BBC Breakfast” program which parts of society should be seen themselves as risk groups for Covid-19. Van-Tam responded that the state offered the flu vaccine primarily to those, with the exception of children. Van-Tam, however, only described those groups that are also at higher risk of contracting Covid-19, and in no way did it mean that people vaccinated against flu are more exposed to the coronavirus. This was later confirmed by a spokeswoman for the English Ministry of Health.
