"As millions of bedridden people can attest, influenza is surging around the world. The virus has driven a wave of illness and hospitalizations in countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States, where "suddenly everybody is seeing not just cases, but high numbers of cases", says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland."
"So, why is this flu season so bad? Scientists suspect that it is in part due to a new strain of the influenza virus that has risen to dominance. The variant has a high number of key mutations, which means that it is much less similar to the strain used in the flu vaccine than previous seasons' viruses have been. This might make it easier for the virus to shrug off the immune system and vaccines."
Influenza is surging globally, producing early and intense seasons with high case numbers and hospitalizations across multiple countries. A newly dominant H3N2 variant carries many key mutations, reducing similarity to the vaccine strains and potentially enabling immune escape. The dominant subtype has not been prevalent in recent seasons, leaving population immunity relatively weak. Current vaccines still appear to reduce risk of severe illness. The season began earlier and accelerated faster than usual in many regions, and some countries declared epidemics after unexpected increases. Overall activity is worse than average, though final impact relative to past decades remains uncertain.
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