The professor believes that flu vaccination would make sense to start earlier, however a big issue is whether there is availability of updated vaccines.
Concern prevails among scientists about the unusually increased spread of influenza for the season, with the EODY issuing an announcement on the matter on Friday.
According to Professor Ghika Mayorkini, the coexistence of the flu and Covid is problematic as “It is difficult to assess at this moment what will happen to the NHS, but it is certainly something that concerns us for the pressure that is expected to be exerted October-November” .
The flu appeared two months earlier in the Southern Hemisphere which is now in winter and this has its explanation. According to Mr. Mayorkini, the strong wave is due to the fact that “in the last two years, the population has not been exposed to the flu, especially those under 50 years of age, where most are unvaccinated, so the population’s immunity has decreased, resulting in the waves flu to come earlier and for this reason we can also see outbreaks in young populations during the summer”.
He believes that flu vaccination would make sense to start earlier, but the big issue is whether there is availability of updated flu vaccines.
Mandatory vaccination against the coronavirus is unlikely
Regarding the updated coronavirus vaccines, Mr Majorkinis stressed that their logic is similar to that of the updated flu vaccines. Depending on the most widespread strains of the previous year, the vaccines are updated, he added.
Regarding the adoption of measures for compulsory vaccination, Mr. Majorkinis said “that at the moment we do not see pressure for compulsory vaccination and this is not a possible scenario. Compulsory comes within the framework of proportionality. In order to ensure the smooth operation of The compulsion comes to YOU”.
Over 50% of the population has contracted covid-19 in the summer
More than 50% of the population contracted covid-19 in the summer, with the predominant subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of the ‘Omicron’ variant, estimates Gikas Majorkinis, speaking to APE-MPE, who explains that the specific strains seem to were pyrogenic, meaning they induce a stronger immune response than Omicron’s BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants, “so we think the immunity induced will be stronger. It remains to be seen in practice”.
This particular pandemic will not be eradicated
He notes that we cannot yet confidently say that we are in an endemic phase, considering that “we will have passed into a phase of predictable outbreaks, around April next year. This particular pandemic will not be eradicated, the coronavirus will not disappear. When we say that the pandemic will end, we mean that we will pass into a stage of symbiosis with the virus that we are already experiencing”.
He does not rule out the emergence of a new mutation by identifying it in the coming months, explaining that we should see the profile of the winter outbreak and the increase in transmissibility begins in October and November. In these months we expect a strain or substrain, last year we had Omicron at the end of December that came from South Africa”. Mr Majorkinis explains that “pandemics are weakened by gradual building of cross-immunity that is, with vaccines and infection”. We had the advantage , he emphasizes, that in this particular pandemic, vaccines were very quickly developed that speed up this process and millions of people have been saved in the process of transitioning to living with the virus.
RES-EMP
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