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Up to 40,000 influenza cases could be prevented in Western Australia this winter if more primary school-aged children were vaccinated, researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia have found.
The FluBub Study will investigate whether giving the flu vaccine much earlier than the six months currently recommended by the National Immunisation Program will protect babies at the greatest risk of a severe influenza infection when they are most vulnerable.
Western Australia has experienced historically low levels of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza this winter due to the public health measures implemented to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
At just two years old, Lucy lost her fight against flu. With your generous help, we can finally beat influenza.
New research investigating the devastating impact of the 2017 flu season by PAEDS-FluCAN, a national collaboration observing influenza in children, confirmed it was time to take action after thousands of children were hospitalised with the virus last year.
People are being urged to ensure they've had their vaccination with the 'flu season expected to hit in Western Australia within weeks.
During winter months of temperate regions, concurrent epidemics of multiple respiratory pathogens can occur, causing periods of increased clinical burden. Case time series, which are predominantly used to monitor infection levels, can exhibit substantial noise and day-of-the-week effects, limiting the visual interpretation of trends in raw data.
Maternal influenza and pertussis vaccination is an important strategy to reduce morbidity and mortality in infants. Previous vaccine safety studies have mostly focused on the association between maternal vaccination and fetal death.
Estimating the temporal trends in infectious disease activity is crucial for monitoring disease spread and the impact of interventions. Surveillance indicators routinely collected to monitor these trends are often a composite of multiple pathogens. For example, "influenza-like illness"-routinely monitored as a proxy for influenza infections-is a symptom definition that could be caused by a wide range of pathogens, including multiple subtypes of influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and RSV.
Understanding the geospatial distribution of influenza infection and the risk factors associated with infection clustering can inform targeted preventive interventions. We conducted a geospatial analysis to investigate the spatial patterns and identify drivers of medically attended influenza infection across all age groups in Western Australia.