
Influenza Update For 2016 Winter Holidays
Americans are gearing up for travel to celebrate the winter holidays amid a mild start to the influenza season.
As travel starts to increase for the winter holidays, influenza infections are bound to rise, but data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are still showing relatively mild influenza activity across the United States.
“New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the Southeast and the Northwest” have seen the highest influenza activity so far, stated Lynnette Brammer, MPH, an epidemiologist with the CDC, in a recent
Because health officials do not yet know how severe this season’s flu will be they are advising that it is not too late to receive this year’s flu shot.
Ms. Brammer stated that although the predominant strain so far this year is H3N2, the H1N1 strain of the virus is also circulation. As the season gets underway, influenza activity is expected to rise, and we could see incidences of H1N1 infections surpass H3N2, as was the case last year, according to Ms. Brammer. Both the H3N2 and H1N1 strains of influenza are included in this year’s vaccine.
The 2016-2017 trivalent influenza vaccine protects against the following strains of influenza:
- A/California/7/2009 (H1N1) pdm09-like virus,
- A/Hong Kong/4801/2014 (H3N2)-like virus and a
- B/Brisbane/60/2008-like virus (B/Victoria lineage).
“Four component vaccines are recommended to include the same three viruses above, plus an additional B virus called B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus (B/Yamagata lineage),” according to the CDC. It is important to note that the live attenuated influenza vaccine (nasal spray flu vaccine) is not
According to the
Children younger than 5 years of age, adults older than 65,
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