With regard to the next vaccination campaign against the flu that is about to start at the end of October, CanaryDoctor will tell you several interesting facts.
Getting the vaccine every year reduces a person's risk of getting the flu by up to 50%. The vaccine also reduces the chance of serious illness, hospitalization, and death. Because of this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone over the age of 6 months get a flu shot.
Every year in Spain, the flu vaccine is designed to protect against the strains of flu that scientists believe will be the most common. However, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine depends on which strains of flu are most prevalent and how they compare to the strains the vaccine protects against. Because of this, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine varies from year to year.
Reasons to get vaccinated against influenza in Canary Islands
In addition to preventing illness, the flu shot also reduces the risk of hospitalization and death. Here are some reasons to get a yearly flu shot:
- Receiving the vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalization in the intensive care unit and the risk of death.
- Among adults hospitalized for the flu, vaccinated people are less likely to need intensive care unit care.
- People with heart disease who receive the vaccine are less likely to experience cardiac events.
- People with diabetes and chronic lung disease who get the vaccine are less likely to be hospitalized for those conditions.
- Pregnant people who get the vaccine are less likely to be hospitalized for influenza than pregnant people who don't get the vaccine.
- In addition to protecting you, getting a flu shot can prevent you from getting the flu and from spreading it to others, including infants and the elderly, who are at higher risk for complications.
- Pregnant people who get the vaccine help protect their baby from the flu (by passing on the protective antibodies developed by the vaccine), which can be valuable during the first six months of life when a child can't be vaccinated.
Influenza Vaccine Efficacy Factors
There are a number of factors that influence the effectiveness of the flu vaccine each year. The most important is strain matching, whether the strains the vaccine protects against match the flu strains that circulate most widely during a given season.
In addition to the construction of the vaccine, there are more personal factors that influence the effectiveness of the vaccine:
Strain matching
To decide which strains are covered by the flu vaccine, data on flu infections from around the world is collected. Using that, the World Health Organization (WHO) meets twice a year to decide which strains to focus on in vaccines.
Vaccination schedule
It takes two weeks for the flu vaccine to be optimally effective. That's why government agencies recommend that everyone get a flu shot in October or November, before flu infections become widespread.
The patient's age
Within a given year, the protection provided by the influenza vaccine may vary by age, due to changes in the immune system over time. There is no way to predict for which age groups the flu vaccine will be more or less effective in any given season.
Previous health of the patient
Vaccines depend on a person's immune system responding to the vaccine by producing antibodies, which are proteins that have specific targets, in this case, the influenza virus. If a person has an impaired immune system due to a health condition, he or she may not mount the desired immune response, reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine. There is a wide variety of health conditions that can affect your immune system's response.
The flu vaccination campaign begins in Canary Islands, as in the rest of the autonomous communities, from the month of October. After knowing all the reasons to get vaccinated against the flu, we hope that our esteemed readers try to schedule their vaccination at their Assistance Center. You can too enter our medical search engine to obtain information on the main Healthcare Centers in Canary Islands.
