Several countries have expanded their guidelines for flu vaccine shots this year, but vaccination rates remain suboptimal, health experts say.
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Flu season is in full swing, but Europeans are less well protected due to falling vaccination rates in at-risk groups.
Where do you think that 27,600 people die from flu every year in the European Union and the United Kingdomand hospitals are currently out of breath, as they face a cocktail of respiratory illnesses, including influenza, COVID-19, norovirus, an emetic virus, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Separately, human metapneumovirus (HMPV), which typically peaks in late winter, is making headlines due to an outbreak in China.
Older adults, very young children, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses are at greater risk of becoming seriously ill from the flu, and public health authorities recommend that they usually get the flu vaccine every year.
Several countries have even expanded their vaccination recommendations this year, but flu vaccination rates are falling across Europe, particularly among older people and health care workers, according to a report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), published on the website.
As a result, vaccination rates in most countries are far below what is recommended to protect public health, prompting European health officials to sound the alarm about these low rates in october.
“Often the general public is unaware of the risks of influenza, which can be extremely serious,” Ben Kasstan-Dabush, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Euronews Health.
While vaccines are updated based on which flu strains are expected to be circulating that year, “people may think they can manage their symptoms and may not need to be vaccinated ” added Mr. Kasstan-Dabush.
In older adults, the flu vaccination rate for the 2023-2024 season ranged from 12% in Slovakia to 78% in Denmarkwhich was the only country, with Irelandto achieve the European objective of 75 % over the past three flu seasons.
Vaccination rates have remained relatively stable this year in some countries, but have fallen among older adults in Croatia, FranceIceland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain, according to the ECDC.
The trends observed last season were not always uniform.
For example, while Denmark tends to have higher vaccination levels, its coverage fell last year among pregnant women and adults in general. In Spain, where children were much more likely to be vaccinated last year than the previous season, the vaccination rate fell among health professionals.
Why are vaccination rates falling?
Low vaccination rates have been a long-standing problem for Europe, but they took on a new dimension during the COVID-19 pandemic, before disappearing from many people’s minds once the threat subsided.
In Belgiumfor example, the number of vaccinations increased sharply between 2019 and 2020, before falling again in 2021, according to a report on the Belgian health system.
“A legacy of the COVID-19 era [est que] people are tired of vaccine messaging,” Mr. Kasstan-Dabush said, but “I don’t think it’s necessarily the dominant factor” that’s driving down vaccination rates.
ADVERTISEMENTPublic confidence in vaccines varies considerably across Europe.
In Latvia, for example, 42% of people think vaccines are generally safe, compared to 84% in Portugal, according to the Vaccine Confidence Project led by researchers from the United Kingdom, Belgium and Hong Kong.
Even many health care professionals are wary of vaccines, according to a 2023 study that found that male health care workers and doctors were more likely to get flu shots than women and other healthcare professionals. health.
The pandemic also played a role, not surprisingly, as more health care workers open to COVID-19 vaccines took the flu shot.
ADVERTISEMENT“Another important problem is the lack of vaccination culture among health professionals, especially those who have been practicing medicine for decades and who are not always up to date with the latest recommendations, he told Euronews Health Dr. Silvio Tafuri, professor of public health at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy, who led the study.
Still, focusing solely on vaccine hesitancy often puts the emphasis on people as the problem, Kasstan-Dabush said, neglecting how flu vaccinations are integrated into chronic disease care for risk groups.
How to improve the use of the influenza vaccine?
Several countries have taken steps to make the flu vaccine more widely available, for example by expanding their recommendations for children.
Twenty European countries now have age-based vaccination guidelines for children, compared to five countries during the 2017-2018 flu season, according to the ECDC.
ADVERTISEMENTHowever, data suggests that national policies “still fail to achieve sufficient levels of uptake in key target groups”, the agency said.
To increase flu vaccination levels, Kasstan-Dabush said vaccines should be integrated into regular medical care for high-risk patients, such as people with chronic illnesses.
An ECDC spokesperson told Euronews Health that strategies “may need to be adapted at the subnational or local level, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach.”
In the meantime, Dr Tafuri said increasing vaccine uptake among younger healthcare workers, combating misinformation around the shots and making healthcare a less political issue could help improve immunization rates.
ADVERTISEMENTHis colleague, Dr Antonio Di Lorenzo, a public health resident at the same Italian university, added that more specific public health messages were needed to reach groups with the lowest vaccination rates.
“We are currently at risk of leaving some people behind because we cannot communicate with them,” Mr Di Lorenzo told Euronews Health.
Taking the time to get the message across to people “is something that produces an avalanche effect,” he notes.
