4. Influenza Infections

4.7. Prevention of Influenza

Good infection control maintenance is a well known cornerstone of disease management and needs to be the focus of general practice management of all respiratory outbreaks including seasonal and pandemic influenza. Infection control refers to all policies, procedures and activities that aim to prevent or minimize the risk of transmission of infectious diseases. This includes simple measures such as adequate hand hygiene by hand washing or hand rubs, and cough etiquette to more involved measures such as personal protective equipment (PPE).

Hospitalized patients with influenza should be placed on droplet precautions (mask,gown and glove). Respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette (placing masks on patients with a cough when outside of their room) should be incorporated into infection control practices. Visitors who have any respiratory illness symptoms should be discouraged from visiting patients. Health care workers who are ill should be restricted from working until they are healthy.

The primary measure to prevent influenza is vaccination of both patients and families, and healthcare workers. The rapid evolution of new strains of influenza necessitates annual reformulation of the vaccine strains and annual vaccination of vaccine recipients to maintain immunity to current influenza strains. All currently available inactivated and live attenuated influenza vaccines are trivalent, meaning they contain 3 strains that represent the most recent circulating wild-type strains in a given year: A (H3N2), A (H1N1), and B. Initiation of influenza vaccination programs should start as soon as influenza vaccine is available from manufacturers and should be continued throughout the influenza season.