Influenza vaccination – still a priority

The seasonal flu campaign remains a critically important public health intervention to reduce morbidity, mortality and hospitalisation associated with flu within the struggling NHS (Gov.UK, 2023a). This is a certainly a challenging time working in NHS and social care which is still recovering from the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Certainly, last winter we saw a surge in respiratory illness and an increase death rate associated to influenzae and pneumonia (Iacobucci, 2023). There is therefore a high value associated to the influenzae vaccination campaign with an aim is to offer vaccination to as many eligible people as possible (Gov.UK, 2023). It is therefore important to identify who is eligible for vaccination and to be aware of the different vaccinations (see Table 1). This is also a potential to be a challenging time as the social contact increases as the use for social distancing and use of PPE decreases. There are also concerns that there is re-emergence of infectious diseases alongside influenzae due to the decreased access to health and medical services (Kenarkoohi et al, 2023).