Jason Gale | (TNS) Bloomberg News
Measures such as stay-at-home orders, border closures, mask-wearing, and others that aimed to stop COVID-19 led to the worldwide vanishing of a well-known winter germ. Now, experts suggest that it might be possible to eliminate a second one with improved vaccines.
For many years, flu outbreaks were caused by four strains. One of them, the Yamagata-lineage of type B influenza, was already struggling before the pandemic and has not been seen since March 2020, according to Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne.
According to Barr, COVID restrictions delivered the final blow that eradicated the strain.
The disappearance of the strain removed a source of death and illness, particularly among children, and a component of yearly flu vaccines.
It also demonstrated the potential for eliminating its type-B cousin, a strain known as “Victoria.”
Unlike type A influenza, which has a wide host range and the potential to cause pandemics, B strains do not have an animal reservoir and might be more easily eliminated with improved vaccines that not only protect against illness but also prevent transmission, as stated by scientists in a recent paper in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Together, the strains account for 23% of annual influenza cases globally on average, including 1.4 million hospitalizations, and about $1.3 billion in healthcare costs in the U.S. alone each year.
“The potential eradication of influenza B virus could alleviate this significant clinical and economic burden,” wrote Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and colleagues in a paper.
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