What kind of flu will it be? “Challenging, elderly and frail people should get vaccinated”

Last year “there was a too low flu vaccination figure”: they decreased (18.9%) compared to the previous season (20.2%), with a decline – according to data from the Ministry of Health at 53% for the elderly, unsatisfactory for this segment of the population. We must remember that complications from the flu can lead to death, 5-10 thousand people every year. At the end of 2023 we saw a boom in influenza infections that added to Covid and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Let’s think about the deaths that these pathogens could cause together and let’s remove a provincial city with 20 thousand inhabitants from the map of Italy. We cannot accept this and the anti-flu, Covid and Rsv vaccination is the only recommended weapon for the elderly, frail and immunosuppressed”. He explains this to Adnkronos Salute Emanuel Nicastridirector of the High Intensity Infectious Diseases Unit of the Spallanzani Infectious Diseases Hospital in Rome.

But what will the next flu season be like? “It is possible that we will see a season with significant influenza-like activity.i – answers Francis Vairohead of the Spallanzani Regional Infectious Disease Surveillance Service – The data from the southern hemisphere indicate a season with a high incidence of cases in an epidemiological framework where influenza, in fact, but also respiratory syncytial virus and Covid coexist. We don’t have a crystal ball, but I believe there will be intense activity and therefore a greater push is needed for the vaccination campaign to come”.

Nicastri’s invitation is to think about planning with your family doctor the vaccination calendar that should start at the beginning of October in many regions. “These are viruses – explains Nicastri – that carry a significant disease burden, you can do the triple vaccination in a single location on the same day or schedule them as single ones. The WHO target in the elderly is 95% of the population and as Italy we are just over halfway to the target”. But to convince the over 60s to get vaccinated it is necessary to change the paradigm. “There is vaccine fatigue – the expert observes – immunizing a healthy person is counterintuitive because I protect you for something that could happen but also not happen, we must say that there may be adverse reactions reported in the informed consent. We know that immunization does not prevent us from contact, but from the serious form of disease, hospitalization and death“.

Vaccination for those who are not in the risk categories? “Only if they are part of those groups of sensitive workers: healthcare workers, law enforcement, public transport”, suggests Nicastri. As for the human respiratory syncytial virus, it is one of the most common viruses that infect children. But not only. According to a focus of the scientific societies Siti-Simit, dedicated specifically to RSV, “the impact of the disease in adults over 60 years of age in high-income countries is higher than previously estimated. In healthy adults, RSV usually involves mild respiratory forms; severe and even fatal forms are recorded in adults at increased risk in relation to age and/or co-morbidities. At a European level, in adults over 60 years of age, approximately 3 million cases of acute respiratory syndromes, over 465 thousand hospitalizations and approximately 33 thousand RSV-related deaths in hospital settings are estimated”.