Covid emergency means flu jabs may not be effective this winter

THE influenza jab may fail to protect people this winter because global Covid surveillance prevented laboratories gathering data on the dominant flu variants.

Health experts were already concerned that coronavirus restrictions had left people with little natural immunity to flu, but now they fear the vaccine may also be mismatched to the virus.

The World Health Organisation made the recommendation about what to put in northern hemisphere jabs in late February, but vaccine makers say that global genetic sequencing of flu fell by up to 94 per cent preceding the decision. The cancellation of flights as countries closed their borders and imposed travel restrictions has also led to a 62 per cent drop in shipments of influenza surveillance samples, experts warn.

A mismatched flu vaccine, coupled with waning immunity, high levels of Covid and the NHS backlog, could quickly lead to the health service being overwhelmed this winter.

Dr Beverly Taylor, at Seqirus, which provides Britain with seasonal flu jabs, said: “We saw quite a big reduction in the labs supplying the genetic sequence data to WHO, and around September last year we saw a 94 per cent drop in the genetic sequence data that was reported into the database. So this has had a massive impact in the reporting.

“We could have reduced the opportunity to identify viruses as they emerge. We certainly have reduced the opportunity to look at which vaccines would give the best overall protection and the best coverage of all the circulating viruses.

“What we’re actually seeing is influenza in geographical pockets, so it’s very difficult to tell which one is going to be the winner. We could see a mismatch for at least one of the subtypes.

‘We saw quite a big reduction in the labs supplying the genetic sequence data to WHO’