How a single flu shot could protect you for decades
6/10/202611 min
Every year, tens of millions of people in the U.S. get the flu vaccine. That’s because the virus changes year-to-year and protection only lasts around six months. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre wants to change that. He’s one scientist working on a universal flu vaccine that could provide decades of protection against all flu illnesses – but only if his team can find the resources that disappeared when U.S. funding dipped.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Regina Barber· Host0:31
[gentle music] You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that anywhere from 24,000 to 81,000 people died from the flu during this past flu season. Hundreds of thousands more were hospitalized, and millions were infected, and this is a moderate season. In the event of a whole flu pandemic, those numbers could be much higher.
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre· Guest1:01
[upbeat music] There is more than 100 potential pandemic flu viruses that could start a pandemic.
Regina Barber· Host1:07
That's Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a viral immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He's working on a vaccine that could not only protect people from a pandemic flu virus but all flu viruses. No more annual flu shots. He calls it a universal flu vaccine.
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre· Guest1:26
This shot that we are working on will,