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COVID may have pushed a leading seasonal flu strain to extinction - Ars Technica
Oct 01, 2022 1 min, 3 secs
Still, the influenza B/Yamagata lineage remains missing, according to a study published this week in the journal Eurosurveillance.

Two are influenza type A viruses: subtypes of H1N1 viruses and H3N2 viruses.

The other two are influenza type B viruses: offshoots of the Victoria and Yamagata lineages.

(For a more detailed explanation of influenza, check out our explainer here.) Current quadrivalent vaccines target season-specific versions of each of these four types of flu viruses.

Having fewer flu viruses around means it could be easier to match future vaccines to circulating viruses, making seasonal shots more effective.

But, before health experts can game out future influenza seasons, they'd like to know if B/Yamagata is truly gone.

Rather than circulating viruses, they may simply be detecting signatures of B/Yamagata from vaccines that carry live-attenuated influenza viruses.

The authors note that a number of B/Yamagata detections in the US and Scotland were found to be from live-attenuated influenza vaccines rather than real cases of circulating virus.

"From a laboratory perspective, we think it would be advisable to increase the capability and capacity to determine the lineage of all detected influenza B viruses around the world as this is critical to determine the absence of B/Yamagata lineage viruses," they conclude.

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