Rome, 5 November – Great response from the citizens of Verona, at least in the 100 pharmacies that provide the service, in the first ten days of the flu vaccination campaign for the 2024-25 season, with numerous requests also for the administration of the anti-Covid vaccine.
This was communicated in a press note from Federfarma Verona, specifying that the request for antifle vaccines – administered free of charge to all subjects aged 60 and over (as well as some specific categories), who have already carried out at least one vaccination, after compilation of the medical history and informed consent has so far been truly significant.
“We are seeing a massive influx into vaccination pharmacies, contnot that the population gives us their trust” explains the president of the owners’ union of the Scaliger province Elena Vecchioni (pictured)which interprets citizens’ choice to protect themselves with the vaccine as compliance “to health indications on prevention to safeguard one’s own health and that of vulnerable people. It takes at least two weeks for the vaccine to activate the antibodies necessary for the body to fight the disease and therefore we promptly invite flu vaccination as the peak is expected towards the end of November, earlier than normal. Also for para syndromes
flu that are circulating in this period, patients are invited not to resort to do-it-yourself treatments, much less take them without a medical prescriptionantibiotics, which do not treat the virus at all but its complications and only where there is a real need”.
The press release from Verona arrives practically in conjunction with the first cases of influenza from the H3N2 virus (which as is known the press has already renamed as “Australian”) in Italy, followed by the first identified in Novara already last 11 October: it happened yesterday the news of an isolated case in Genoa, a 76-year-old man already hospitalized in Infectious Diseases at the San Martino Polyclinic, as reported in a post on social media Matteo Bassettidirector of infectious diseases at the San Martino polyclinic hospital in Genoa, also providing other details on the characteristics of the flu that we will have to deal with this year.
“In particular, the neurological picture predominates, demonstrating the tropism of H3N2 for many organs including the lungs and the brain” explains Bassetti, who lets himself go with a prediction: “If a good morning starts in the morning… it won’t be a good flu season”.
A fear also confirmed by the progress of the Australiana epidemic in the other hemisphere, where it obviously arrived before ours, proving to be a very serious disease with many cases, more than 15 million, and with many hospitalizations. “We must fear that alsoand in Italy there will be a particular form of flu
serious entity and expect a higher number of encephalitis than what we have recorded in recent years” he explained Massimo Andreoniscientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (Simit), on the sidelines of the meeting organized yesterday in Rome by Pfizer for the presentation of the campaign Get used to protecting yourselfan initiative authorized by the Ministry of Health and carried out with the patronage of the main scientific and professional societies (among others, there are also Fofi and Federfarma), with the aim of raising public awareness of the importance of vaccination against respiratory infections, particularly among the over 60s and people with chronic pathologies.
“Let us remember that in Italy on average between 5,000 and 15,000 people die from the flu every year, so evidently when we think about a particularly serious form such as the Australian flu, we must expect a lethality which turns out to be particularly important and therefore vaccination becomes essential” added Andreoni, insisting on the opportunity to focus on vaccination prevention. “The anti-flu vaccine is formulated every year based on what has circulated and what we expect to circulate in Italy too. It is good to remember that all influenza viruses can reach the central nervous system and therefore can cause even very serious and very significant encephalitis. The more severe the flu form” concluded the expert “the more we will observe a higher number of cases with involvement of the central nervous system”.
