Flu News Day, 8/10/2022

Childhood immunizations have decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic began, marking the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccination rates in about 30 years. From 2019 to 2021, the percent of children who received three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine (often used as an indicator of other childhood vaccination rates) dropped by 5%. Vaccination rates for other diseases such as measles and HPV have also decreased. Likely due to supply chain disruptions, economic challenges, concurrent crises and resource limitations, lower vaccination rates have allowed preventable diseases such as wild poliovirus and measles to circulate. To learn about the importance of “catch-up” immunization programs, read more here.

A recent pre-print suggests that intranasally administering an inert bacterial spore may reduce symptoms of influenza A virus through innate immunity. The study, which intranasally administered the B. subtilis strain DSM 3244K to ferrets and then challenged the subjects with H7N9, found that DSM 3244K -treated animals exhibited reduced signs of infection with significantly lower body temperatures two days post infection and significantly reduced weight loss. Moreover, researchers found no significant difference in viral shedding of the disease, suggesting that the reduced symptoms must be caused by an increase in innate immunity—perhaps through increasing the number of TLR-agonists, chemicals that produce cell responses which protect against threats including influenza. These findings agree with earlier murine model studies; to read more about these findings using a ferret model, which more closely mimic infection in viral shedding seen in humans compared to mice, read the pre-print here.

Despite a challenged healthcare system, the National Influenza Centre and WHO’s influenza team have successfully advocated for influenza surveillance to continue in Afghanistan. The influenza surveillance system is comprised of trained teams at nine hospitals throughout the country who send samples of infected individuals to laboratories for PCR. Afghanistan is one of the few countries in the region applying “an integrated approach to surveillance promoted by GISRS+”, and this continued success is largely due to funding from the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework Partnership Contribution. To learn more about this surveillance system which, thanks to years of investment, was already functioning before the country’s regime change, read more here.