Influence of annual flu vaccination on the incidence level of medical college students

The article deals with the organization of annual influenza vaccination of students of St. Petersburg Medical College No. 2, practical studies to assess the effectiveness of methods of specific and nonspecific prevention of influenza are given. All over the world, and this is reflected in the documents of the World Health Organization (WHO), the main measure to combat influenza epidemics is recognized as annual vaccination. The purpose of vaccination as a mass measure is to reduce the incidence of disease, especially severe forms of influenza. Modern vaccines, provided that vaccine and circulating strains match, provide an average 70–90% reduction in the incidence of influenza among people, 70‒85% reduction in the risk of serious complications, 56% reduction in the incidence of other acute respiratory viral infections, 48% reduction in the number of hospitalizations associated with complications of influenza. The peculiarity of influenza is that a person who has had this infection is not protected from it in the future; susceptibility to re-infection due to the variability of the influenza virus in people occurs in a short time.

In order to provide effective immunity against a new strain of the virus, vaccine formulations must be constantly modified. WHO and the Federal Service for Health Surveillance (Roszdravnadzor) make great efforts to achieve the best possible antigenic match between predicted epidemic virus strains and vaccine strains for any given year.