Posted by Michael Wonder on 26 Feb 2018
Statement from FDA Commissioner on FDA’s ongoing efforts to help improve effectiveness of influenza vaccines
26 February 2018 - The current influenza season has been especially difficult, causing widespread illness that has affected all fifty states and resulted in a record number of hospitalisations.
While healthcare professionals continue to combat this year’s flu – which may continue to affect Americans into April – we’re already partnering with other public health agencies to conduct essential work to produce next season’s influenza vaccines.
As part of this process, we’re striving to better understand why we saw reduced effectiveness of this year’s influenza vaccines against one strain of influenza A, called H3N2. It was this strain that caused much of the influenza-related illness this flu season. Moreover, this year is not the first time we have seen vaccines be less effective against this particular strain of influenza, H3N2.
