Future Flu Shots Drop One Component

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced its vaccine recommendations for the 2024 influenza season in the southern hemisphere.

For countries in tropical and subtropical regions, the WHO recommendations for influenza vaccine composition (NH or SH) are available on the WHO Global Influenza Programme website as of September 29, 2023.

The WHO also recommended removing the influenza B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage component, which has not been detected since early 2020.

While influenza vaccines are safe and effective, manufacturing and using inactivated and live attenuated vaccines containing B/Yamagata lineage viruses pose a theoretical risk of reintroducing the B/Yamagata lineage virus into the population.

This risk can be mitigated by removing B/Yamagata lineage viruses from the vaccines.

Therefore, the WHO Influenza Vaccine Composition Advisory Committee believes that including a B/Yamagata antigen as a component of influenza vaccines is no longer warranted, and every effort should be made to exclude it as soon as possible, wrote the WHO.

Furthermore, when the WHO recommends viruses for inclusion in influenza vaccines twice each year, it is up to national or regional authorities to approve the composition and formulation of vaccines used in each country.

These new WHO recommendations do not impact the 2023-2024 flu shots currently offered in the United States.

As of September 16, 2023, 83.59 million influenza vaccine doses had been distributed in the U.S. Annual flu shots, which the U.S. CDC recommends for most people, are readily available at most pharmacies in the U.S.