During the pandemic years we protected ourselves with masks and distancing measures. This slowed down the Covid and at the same time has effectively eliminated the spread of the flu. “So today we have many children who have never come into contact with the flu virus, which can therefore circulate more quickly. Here, the crux is precisely this: if more people become infected, due to this greater spread, the number of deaths and serious cases could be high among the elderly and frail. It is useful to increase the rate of anti-flu vaccination”. Professor Gianni Rezza he is a university professor of Hygiene at San Raffaele in Milan, where he also directs a master’s degree in epidemiology, and warns: making predictions on how the flu will go this season is not a simple exercise but we can establish some fixed points.
Professor, even if you warn against easy predictions, the question remains: how will the flu go this year?
“Sometimes numbers and catastrophic predictions are thrown out a bit at random. Last year the H1N1 subtype, derived from swine flu, was dominant. We had a lot of cases, with intense circulation. This year, if we look at the experience that always precedes us in Australia, we can assume that the H3N2 subtype will also be predominant here.”
Will it be heavier?
“In reality, the symptoms and lethality between one subtype and another do not differ that much. What matters is that, as happened last year, it will circulate in a population in which there is a large pool, made up of children and young people, who, due to the protective measures that were rightly put in place during the pandemic, have never come into contact with the influenza virus.”
We have more people without natural defenses and therefore it would be better to protect ourselves with vaccines.
“That without a doubt. It is a numerical fact: even if the lethality is low, the number of deaths, or even serious symptoms, in absolute terms will be high because there will be many more people with the flu. It already happened last year, you will remember. And it happened again in Australia even if it is not a given that what happened in the southern hemisphere will also happen here. But we must take it into account.”
It is right to protect the elderly.
“Look, there are different strategies. In the US, for example, they are focusing much more on vaccinating children, because they believe that this will limit the circulation of the virus. In Italy and continental Europe, on the other hand, they prefer to focus on protecting people at risk, because the goal is to limit clinical severity, deaths and serious illnesses.”
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