There’s some good news about flu season this year. Doctors and scientists don’t expect the worst.
The flu season in the Southern Hemisphere, where the cold-weather illness period wraps up as we head into ours, often serves as a harbinger of what’s to come for us. There, cases picked up a little earlier than usual in some countries but didn’t result in an especially large number of hospitalizations and deaths, say public health experts and doctors.
Also encouraging: The components in this year’s flu vaccine are a good match to the predominant strain so far.
One study found that the current version of the flu vaccine reduced the risk for flu-related hospitalizations by 52% in the Southern Hemisphere, a pretty strong indicator of effectiveness, says Alicia Budd, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s domestic influenza surveillance team.
It’s impossible to predict the overall outlook for respiratory illnesses this winter, but a mild flu season would be a welcome breather after last year’s “tripledemic” of flu, Covid-19 and RSV hit hard. Many employers are less forgiving about working from home, taking away some flexibility that workers had when they got sick or their family members got sick. And families are preparing to gather for Thanksgiving and other holidays soon.
The flu vaccine protects against four varieties of flu, two which are known as “type A” viruses and two “type B” viruses. Type A viruses typically produce more serious illness, particularly one known as H3N2, but type B viruses can hit children hard.
The predominant strain in the Southern Hemisphere this year was a type A virus known as H1N1. Some countries like South Africa also had significant levels of H3N2.