Flu News Day, 7/12/2022

In a recent study, a new type of vaccine shows promise in protecting against several SARS-like betacoronaviruses (sarbecoviruses)–a breakthrough step towards the development of pan-coronavirus vaccines. Combining segments of eight sarbecoviruses to elicit antibodies against conserved and relatively occluded epitopes, the candidate vaccine—mosaic-8—has generated a protective antibody response in mice and monkeys, protecting against SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, as well as variants including Omicrons. After mosaic-8 immunization, epitope mapping revealed an increase in targeting of conserved epitopes, suggesting a promising sign that mosaic-8-RBD-nanoparticles could protect against other SARS-CoV-2 variants and sarbecoviruses.

Multi-channel promotion of influenza and vaccine knowledge is recommended to increase influenza vaccine acceptance across socio-economic groups in China. In a survey analysis performed by Nanjing Normal University, University of Ljubljana and Yonsei University, the study used a three-part questionnaire to investigate the factors influencing knowledge level and low influenza vaccination rate as it relates to informational media, exploring the demographic profiles of respondents and evaluating pre-existing influenza vaccine literacy and respondents’ media usage. Click the link below to read more about the correlations found between online media usage and influenza and vaccination knowledge.

On July 11th the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and Wellcome announced a funding commitment of £1 billion for the Francis Crick Institute over the next seven years. The Francis Crick Institute, founded in 2015, was established to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research, making discoveries about “how life works” to transform treatment, diagnosis and prevention of human diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, infections and neurodegenerative diseases. This funding will put the UK at the forefront of global innovation, solve scientific challenges and support transformative research. Read the full article to learn more about this exemplary commitment.

Strong subjective and emotional communication, stressing negative emotions as well as tangible threats to personal health and well-being have been found most effective in communicating the risk associated with failing to vaccinate for influenza and other high-risk communicable diseases. This result comes out of an anonymous survey study of the staff at the University Clinical Hospital in Wroclaw, Poland. The survey asked respondents to consider the socio-communicative factors driving their personal decision to receive vaccinations against influenza and COVID-19. Only 4% of Poland’s general population and 8% of Poland’s medical population cited “low level of fear of becoming ill with influenza and its related health complications” as the main driver for not getting vaccinated. Read the full article below to learn about how these findings can inform more effective communications campaigns for vaccination.