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2018-19 Holiday Season Flu Warning

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While the forecast for the 2018-19 flu season is not as severe as years past, manufacturers projected they would provide between 163 million and 168 million doses of injectable vaccine for the U.

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S. market. Companies are encouraged to maintain efforts to prevent the spread of the flu in the workplace.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently provided updates regarding the 2018-19 influenza season and you can access the outlook report here. Some new information includes:

  • Flu vaccines have been updated to better match circulating viruses [the B/Victoria component was changed and the influenza A(H3N2) component was updated].
  • The age recommendation for Afluria Quadrivalent was changed from 18 years and older to 5 years and older after the annual recommendations were published last season to be consistent with Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved labeling.
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  • Most regular-dose egg-based flu shots will be quadrivalent [they will have four components].
  • The nasal spray flu vaccine (live attenuated influenza vaccine or “LAIV”) is again a recommended option for influenza vaccination of persons for whom it is otherwise appropriate, including for use in non-pregnant individuals, 2 to 49 years old.

For 2018-2019, trivalent (three-component) vaccines are recommended to contain:

  • A/Michigan/45/2015 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus
  • A/Singapore/INFIMH-16-0019/2016 A(H3N2)-like virus (updated)
  • B/Colorado/06/2017-like (Victoria lineage) virus (updated)

Quadrivalent (four-component) vaccines, which protect against a second lineage of B viruses, are recommended to contain:

  • The three recommended viruses above, plus B/Phuket/3073/2013-like (Yamagata lineage) virus

Though the CDC recommends that people get a flu vaccine by the end of October, “getting vaccinated later, however, can still be beneficial and vaccination should continue to be offered throughout the flu season, even into January or later.” Check out the agency’s FluView site for more national trends and other information.

AlertFind recently released a “Deadliest Pandemics of This Century” infographic, calling out the severity of the 2017-18 influenza season, which caused 80,000 deaths and 900,000 hospitalizations. It also provides tips employers can use to prevent the spread of disease.

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Lessons From Ebola: Boosting National Preparedness for Pandemics

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NEW ORLEANS—At the first day of the International Disaster Conference and Expo (IDCE), one of the primary topics of areas of concern for attendees and speakers alike was the risk of pandemics and infectious diseases. In a plenary session titled “Contagious Epidemic Responses: Lessons Learned,” Dr. Clinton Lacy, director of the Institute for Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security at Rutgers, focused on the recent and ongoing Ebola outbreak.

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While only four people in the United States were diagnosed with Ebola, three of whom survived what was previously considered a death sentence, government and health officials cannot afford to ignore the crisis, Lacy warned.

“This outbreak is not just a cautionary tale, it is a warning,” Lacy said.

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“Ebola is our public health wakeup call.

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”

A slow start by the Centers for Disease Control, inadequate protective gear in healthcare facilities, and inadequate planning for screening quarantine and waste management were some of the key failings in national preparedness for Ebola. And all were clearly preventable. A significant amount has been done to improve preparedness, Lacy said, but there is still a significant amount yet to do as well.

Among the issues to be addressed, Lacy pointed to:

Lacy Pandemic Preparedness

Some of that improvement must come from the top. Funding has been cut for healthcare facilities nationwide, as has money for the Hospital Preparedness Program, operated by the CDC. Other solutions can be carried out at both a national level and among individual healthcare facilities, including:

Lacy Solutions

Ultimately, Lacy said, the concern is not about Ebola—it’s about the new and emerging diseases that could prove even more catastrophic. Dozens of diseases have been discovered emerging in nature, and we have no previous contact with them, meaning we have no immunity. Further, the risks of reemerging illnesses and synthetic bio threats that any graduate student or doctor of biology could make in a lab pose a significant danger that must be prepared for now.

“Public health infrastructure is like fire departments—you can’t just fund them when there are fires,” Lacy said.