Jason Gale | (TNS) Bloomberg News
Because of stay-at-home orders, border closures, wearing masks, and other actions to stop COVID-19, a well-known winter germ vanished from the world. Now, experts believe it might be possible to also get rid of another one with better vaccines.
For many years, four strains drove flu outbreaks. One of them, called the Yamagata-lineage of type B influenza, was already struggling before the pandemic and has not been seen since March 2020, said Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne.
The COVID restrictions delivered the final blow that eliminated it, according to Barr.
The disappearance of this strain got rid of a source of death and illness, especially among children, and a part of yearly flu vaccines.
This also suggests that it might be feasible in the future to remove its similar strain called “Victoria.”
Unlike type A influenza, which can cause pandemics and infect a wide range of hosts, B strains do not have an animal reservoir and could be more easily eliminated with improved vaccines that not only prevent illness, but also stop transmission, scientists explained in a recent paper in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
Together, these strains make up 23% of global annual influenza cases on average, resulting in 1.4 million hospitalizations and about $1.3 billion in health-care costs in the U.S. alone each year.
“The potential eradication of influenza B virus could get rid of this significant medical and financial burden,” Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and colleagues wrote in the paper.
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