This Friday the flu vaccination campaign begins in Castile-La Mancha (Castilla-La Mancha, Society)
The 2024-2025 flu vaccination campaign begins this Friday in Castile-La Mancha and will last until March 31, 2025.
This was announced by Director General of Public Health Laura Ruiz and Director General of Care and Quality at SESCAM Montserrat Hernandez at a press conference.
Both recalled the importance of vaccination as a fundamental element of public health prevention strategies.
Therefore, with the same aim of protection and prevention as in other years, the most vulnerable groups will be offered simultaneous vaccination against influenza and covid, which, together with safety measures, aims to prevent the occurrence of serious conditions and hospitalizations. , complications and mortality due to coinfection of influenza and covid infection.
Based on available data, it can be stated that thanks to vaccination, very few cases of influenza and covid are severe or require hospitalization in the intensive care unit.
For this reason, the Government of Castile-La Mancha continues to make great efforts for another year, as part of its policy of investing in preventive measures to improve health.
As a result of this commitment, investment in vaccines included in the calendar has increased from approximately 5.8 million euros in 2015 to 30 million in 2023 and 39 million euros in this campaign. Five million euros have been invested specifically for this influenza campaign.
The goal of this flu campaign is to reach 75 percent coverage among people aged 60 years and older and 60 percent among pregnant women and people with risk conditions.
A new risk group has been introduced, such as staff of kindergartens and preschool education centers.
The influenza vaccines that will be used in the current campaign will be quadrivalent and trivalent vaccines, vaccines with broader coverage of different influenza strains and tailored to strains more likely to circulate.
More than 500,000 vaccine doses are available for this year’s influenza campaign: 200,000 for the general population aged 60 to 64 years, minors 6 to 23 months of age, and other people at other risk groups; 300,000 for people aged 65 and older; and 31,000 for the child population aged 24 to 59 months.
“As we continue our journey, we can say that we are the leading autonomous community in the field of influenza vaccination, and we hope to achieve very good vaccination coverage data, as in previous campaigns,” the CEOs said.
COVID-19 vaccine
Regarding COVID vaccination, it was recalled that although it is no longer a public health emergency, the SARS-COV19 virus continues to circulate and is prone to mutations.
COVID-19 vaccines can be administered at the same time as influenza and pneumococcal vaccines, in a different anatomical area, using different syringes. Those injected into the same limb should be spaced at least 2.5 cm apart to individualize possible local reactions.
Thus, starting tomorrow, a simultaneous vaccination campaign against influenza and covid will begin in order of priority, with the people and workers of these social-medical centers or residential buildings, as well as people over 80 years of age serving their particular vulnerability, being institutionalized first , and then will decrease by age group.
Respiratory syncytial virus
On October 1, vaccination of children against respiratory syncytial virus began; they recalled that last year hospitalization for this pathology decreased by 80 percent. This is due to the fact that last year there was high vaccination adherence: 95 percent of children were vaccinated.