One million Quebecers have received the flu vaccine

A month and a half after the start of the flu vaccination campaign, more than a million Quebecers have now rolled up their sleeves. Less than one in two people aged 75 and over has received their dose, however, a figure that will have to increase to limit hospitalizations, warn experts.

Alice Girard-Bosse

The Press

“People aged 75 and over and people with chronic illnesses need to come in large numbers to be vaccinated,” explains The Press the D^r Gaston De Serres, physician-epidemiologist at the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec.

Currently, 46% of people 75 and older have received their dose. This vaccination coverage climbs to 64% and to 62% for residents of CHSLDs and RPAs.

Indeed, approximately 90% of deaths occur among people aged 75 and over and approximately 50% occur among residents of CHSLDs.

In a context where the health system is already overloaded by COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, vaccination against influenza is essential to reduce the risk of complications from influenza and hospitalizations, believes the D^r From Serres.

Towards a longer season?

In addition, the flu season could be longer and more intense than normal, experts believe.

“It is possible that we have a greater number of cases than usual because individuals have not been exposed that much to the influenza virus in recent years”, specifies for his part the D^r Guy Boivin, Full Professor in the Department of Microbiology-Immunology and Infectious Diseases of the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval.

The D^r Boivin recalls that there was no winter flu epidemic during the first year of the pandemic.

“Last year there was a very late and brief little flu season, which started in mid-April,” he adds.

Only in the last week, 427 cases of flu have been recorded in Quebec. In 2020-2021, 69 cases of influenza were reported across Canada. This figure jumped to 16,126 in 2021-2022.

Efficiency under the magnifying glass

The vaccine prevents the flu in about 40 to 60 percent of healthy people, when the strains of virus it contains match well with the strains in circulation, according to figures from the Quebec government.

However, it will be necessary to be patient before knowing if the strains of virus contained in the vaccine correspond to those currently circulating in Quebec. But the first virus samples analyzed seem encouraging, says the D^r Bovine.

Essentially, the flu vaccine contains four virus strains that are determined each year by experts from the World Health Organization. “This is the very difficult part for the experts to determine precisely what will circulate next winter, because it depends on a lot of factors”, says the D^r From Serres.

Remember that in Quebec, people aged 60 and over, pregnant women in the second and third trimesters of their pregnancy, children aged 6 to 23 months and people with certain chronic diseases can have access to the vaccine free of charge. The rest of the population can, however, receive it at a private clinic or pharmacy, for a fee.