How well does a flu vaccine work? DRIVE project evaluates performance

Despite challenging conditions posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, the DRIVE project successfully tested how well various brands of flu vaccines worked across five European countries and a range of age groups, and published their results in the scientific journal Frontiers Public Health.

Between four and 50 million European citizens snuffle through flu each year, and sadly between 15 000 and 70 000 people die either due to the virus itself or complications arising from its onset. Several different brands of influenza vaccine are available in Europe any given year – however the performance of these vaccines varies.

The discrepancies in performance could be related to the strain of virus that is circulating as well as other factors such as the technology used to manufacture the vaccine, the age of the recipients of the vaccine or whether recipients were resident in a hospital or primary care setting versus living at home. Knowing what works best, and under which circumstances, could improve outcomes and lead to better protection against influenza, and so in 2017 the European Medicines Agency called on vaccine manufacturers to start tracking the performance of their vaccines. As a result the DRIVE project was set up under the framework of IMI to develop a system that could be used to evaluate brand-specific flu vaccine effectiveness.