Influensasäsongen tar fart – vården uppmanar till vaccination

The flu season is starting unusually early and the government is now urging everyone in high-risk groups to get vaccinated It is especially important that those who have home care get vaccinated Many have already been vaccinated but we see a need for us to increase vaccination coverage In particular in groups where there are daily care services home care or other forms of care and where vaccination coverage is too low It is vulnerable groups that can be at risk of severe illness if they do not have good vaccination protection Influenza is caused by a virus with single-stranded RNA that changes quickly This means that the immunity after an infection only lasts for a few years before the virus mutates enough to infect again That is why people get the flu several times throughout their lives Sometimes a person may have immunity for one two or three years and if lucky a bit longer The virus has changed so much that you can get sick again That is why we often get the flu throughout our lives In Sweden three types of flu virus are currently circulating AH1N1 AH3N2 and a B virus Influenza B is a bit special because it mutates in a different way We will never get those so-called pandemic flus Pandemic influenza occurs when the entire world can be infected by the flu It is always influenza A What occurs in these cases is if we have had a very large mixing of genes from different influenza viruses For example animal or a human has been infected with two different influenza viruses Sometimes a bird virus and a human virus Then a new mix of genes can emerge from the two viruses It's a virus we've never seen before