Experts from the BC Centre for Disease Control are looking for more community doctors and nurses to help as they gear up to monitor flu-like illnesses.
Last year, influenza got off to an early start and the flu season was difficult, in part because of the vaccine mismatch, which translated into the highest number of care facility outbreaks in more than a decade.
Influenza viruses constantly change and each season the flu shot has to be updated to match the new strains that are most likely to make people sick.
“A chanced strain of H3N2 virus that didn’t match the vaccine caused most of the influenza illness last winter,” said Dr. Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at BCCDC. “H3N2 viruses tend to cause more illness, especially in older people, which is why it is so important to monitor this virus closely every year.”
In 2004, Skrowronski’s team pioneered a cost-effective approach for monitoring influenza vaccine effectiveness, known as the test-negative design, which is used each year in Canada and has since been adopted by approximately 20 countries around the world.
Yearly findings based on the test-negative design are submitted to the World Health Organization to help decide whether changes to the influenza vaccine are needed.
“Last year showed the lowest vaccine effectiveness we have recorded in more than ten years,” Skowronski said. “The WHO has replaced last year’s H3N2 vaccine with a new one and we want to check that it gives better protection for the coming season. We rely on doctors and nurses in the community who belong to our monitoring network to help with that.”
The Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network is the only system in Canada to monitor how well the vaccine protects people from influenza viruses circulating in the community each year.
Throughout September the BC Centre for Disease Control team will be packaging and sending out hundreds of special swab kits to existing sentinel sites in BC, but the team is also recruiting more family doctors and nurses to join the network.
Family practitioners in B.C. who would like to join are asked to contact the BCCDC team, and patients can also encourage their family doctors to join by sharing information about the network with them.
For more information, visit the BC Centre for Disease Control website.
