Senior Health Ministry official on the new flu vaccine: "It is identical to the coronavirus vaccines" | Listen

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved for the first time a flu vaccine that uses mRNA technology, the same method used to create the coronavirus vaccines. The new vaccine, M-Flu-Seva by Moderna, was approved for those aged 50 or older after a trial involving more than 40,000 participants demonstrated a higher rate of flu prevention compared to standard vaccines. This approval marks a new stage in the effort to improve the response to a virus that mutates rapidly and leads to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations worldwide every year.

Prof. Tal Brosh, Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Assuta Ashdod Hospital and coordinator of the Ministry of Health's Epidemic Treatment Team, discussed the vaccine with Anat Davidov on 103fm radio.

"It is basically identical to the coronavirus vaccine that was administered in Israel and the rest of the world," he said. "Traditional flu vaccines that we receive every year are produced by growing the virus inside chicken eggs, after which the viruses are extracted. mRNA enters the body's cells, and the cells themselves produce the immunizing material for several days. This is a very efficient and easy-to-produce technique."

Regarding the price of the vaccine, he noted: "It is not certain that the new vaccine will be cheap, as development costs must be covered, but overall, these are vaccines that are easy and inexpensive to produce and also easy to replace."

"Research showed that the effectiveness of this vaccine, relative to a regular one, was about 20% higher. It was approved in the United States just in the last few weeks, but will they manage to administer it in time? I don't know, because it is quite late and we need to start vaccinating soon. It is not yet registered in Israel, which usually happens after US registration. In the coming season, it will certainly not be relevant, and I hope it will be registered in Israel next year," he added.

"A flu vaccine is very safe and is intended for everyone from the age of six months and up. It is effective for everyone, but its importance increases as a person gets older and has more underlying conditions. Unfortunately, flu vaccines are not among our most effective vaccines—if we compare them to measles or tetanus vaccines, which are almost 100% effective, the flu vaccine is far from that and changes from year to year. In good years, it is about 70%, but it can be significantly lower if the vaccine strain does not match the strain that arrives that year."

"The mRNA vaccine looks promising because it is more effective, but there are already existing vaccines, including in Israel, that are more effective for the elderly. What is available in Israel is a high-dose vaccine, which contains 4 times more vaccine than the standard one. It is registered in Israel, but the problem is that it is much more expensive, and therefore the health funds do not market it very much," he added. "The main consideration is financial, but for elderly people, especially those with underlying conditions, I would be happy to see more people receiving the high-dose vaccine," he clarified.

"Ultimately, the most important thing is to get vaccinated with whatever is available—regular or high-dose—and this is not a problem that should be placed on the patient due to the health funds' policies," he concluded.