Tetravalent flu vaccines - 17 million doses released in early October

For the 2019/2020 season, the PEI has approved the strain adjustment for a number of influenza vaccine products. These vaccines may now be sold and used after batch release by the PEI. The approved vaccine batches are all tetravalent influenza vaccines: they correspond to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended strain composition for this year's influenza vaccines and contain components from four virus strains that WHO predicts will circulate in the Northern Hemisphere. The tetravalent flu vaccines can be identified by the fact that the name of the vaccine contains the supplements "tetra" and the year "2019/2020". Flu vaccines are only valid for one season with the approved strain adjustment.

The majority of these influenza vaccines are inactivated vaccines that contain only the components of four virus strains necessary for protection against influenza. In addition, a live vaccine with attenuated vaccine viruses of all four strains is available. Influenza vaccines differ in their pharmaceutical form and the age group for which they are authorised. Inactivated vaccines are administered by injection, and the attenuated live vaccine is administered by nasal spray. The live vaccine is only approved for children and adolescents aged between two and 17 years.

In addition, a flu vaccine is available this season for which the virus strains are propagated in cell cultures - not in chicken eggs - before they are inactivated, purified, and used as vaccine components. It is particularly well suited for people with severe chicken egg protein allergies. Persons who only react with mild symptoms to the consumption of chicken protein can be vaccinated with all approved influenza vaccines.

This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the recommended composition of the flu vaccines one month later than usual due to a lack of clarity concerning one of the four virus strains. The manufacturers and the PEI have made up for this delay. "We at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut processed and approved this year's adaptation of the vaccines to the influenza virus strains that are likely to circulate immediately after submission for the marketing authorisation application. The manufacturers started producing the vaccines immediately after that. We were therefore able to start the batch release at an early stage, so that large quantities of vaccines are already available to the market," said Professor Klaus Cichutek, president of the PEI.

Up-to-date information on the various influenza vaccines, such as the names of the approved strain influenza vaccine products, their age indications, the vaccine composition in this flu season and the number of vaccine doses approved by the PEI, is available from the PEI at www.pei.de/influenza-impfstoffe (German Only).

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