Saying there will be plenty of vaccine and noting that flu seasons are difficult to predict, regional health officials gathered Thursday to urge all area residents to get flu vaccinations this fall and winter.
And you’ll only need one. Unlike last year, the vaccine for the H1N1 virus has been incorporated into the traditional vaccine.
“The flu season is unpredictable,” John Dreyzehner, director of the Cumberland Plateau Health District in Lebanon, Va., said during a news conference at the James H. Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
“We may have a bad season, we may not,” Dreyzehner said. “But we do know that flu vaccine gives you protection that lasts all year long.”
Dreyzehner, Sullivan County Regional Health Department Medical Director Stephen May and Gail Stanley, hospital epidemiologist at Bristol Regional Medical Center, were among those at the panel discussion, billed as the official start of the region’s “Keep Flu Out” campaign.
Traditionally, the season for influenza – commonly referred to as “the flu” – is at its worst during January and February. But health officials said Thursday it’s hard to predict when a flu season actually begins, when it’ll be most severe or when it’ll peak and ease off. That makes it even more important, they said, for area residents to start getting vaccinated now against influenza, one of the nation’s top 10 leading causes of death each year.
“The sooner you get the vaccine, the less your chances of getting the flu,” Dreyzehner said.
Officials said that during this flu season, Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee residents should have no problem getting vaccinated – largely because more vaccine doses have been produced this year – 140 million to 160 million – than ever before in American history.
“There should be plenty of vaccine to go around,” May said.
Like last year, the current flu vaccine can be injected or taken through a nasal mist. This year’s vaccine will protect against three flu strains likely to be common during this flu season: influenza A, influenza B and the 2009 H1NI virus.
The H1N1 virus, in particular, affected numerous people across the country last fall and winter – including some in the Mountain Empire region – but it wasn’t as severe as many feared, said Randy Wykoff, dean of East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health.
“Fortunately, it was a strain of flu that was milder than expected,” Wykoff said of the H1N1 virus. “But every flu season is different, and we can do things to make [H1N1] more preventable.”
May said while all residents over 6 months old should receive the flu vaccine, there are numerous high-priority groups that particularly need to be vaccinated. Those groups include:
* Children who are six months to 4 years old.
* Those who are 50 and older.
* Anyone with chronic lung or heart disease, or diabetes.
* Pregnant women.
* Those living in nursing homes.
* Caregivers – particularly those working with chronically ill patients.
* Native Americans.
* People suffering from diseases that dramatically affect the immune system, such as HIV.
* Youths 6 months to 18 years old who have conditions that require constant aspirin therapy.
In a humorous departure from the serious discussion, Stanley, the BRMC official, asked her fellow panelists to openly act out the various symptoms of flu – from feverish chills, coughing and fatigue to headache, nausea and diarrhea.
Stanley said it was a dramatic way to educate residents on some of the real-life problems they can avoid this flu season – simply by getting the flu vaccine.
“You don’t die from the flu vaccine,” Stanley said. “You can die from the flu.”
rbrown@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2512
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