This year’s flu vaccine has proven to be highly ineffective in treating the virus that has become widespread, especially in the Bay Area, so the doctors and health practitioners have been forced to come up with a supplementary remedy, antiviral medication.

Usually flu vaccines are able to cut down one’s risk of getting the virus by around 50 to 60 percent, but this year the vaccine can barely assure a decrease in risk by 25 percent.

The reason why drug makers were unable to create an effective vaccine this year is because the strain of the virus they were predicting to appear in the Northern Hemisphere from the Southern Hemisphere underwent mutations; each year drug makers monitor the flu strains in the opposite hemisphere, so that when they finally reach the Northern Hemisphere they can be prevented. This practice is generally 80 to 90 percent effective, but the mutations in the flu strain that happened in the Southern Hemisphere this season made it difficult for drug makers to make an appropriate vaccine.

The flu strain variation that we have been seeing is a variation of Type A, subtype H3N2, which has mutated extremely from what drug makers had anticipated.

A less effective vaccine has lead to many more cases of people becoming infected with the flu, and more serious symptoms; because of this the CDC has released advisories to hospitals and doctors nationwide to use antiviral drugs to help infected patients.

For this reason, hospitals have become less resilient to issuing patients who appear to have the flu urgent care.

Dr. David Busch, chief of the infectious diseases division in the Department of Medicine at California Pacific Medical Center, said “But the person who all of a sudden got severe aches and high fever and some respiratory complaints all at once — everything sounds like the flu? That’s the person we encourage to treat right away.”

As of late the flu appears to have had its most severe impact on the Bay Area–taking four lives.

The antivirals being used are generally only administered to patients who have been hospitalized in an intensive care unit, but considering the lack of efficiency the flu vaccine offers, they need to be used for all infected individuals.

Antivirals, when administered within the first 48 hours of an individual’s becoming symptomatic, are said to shave at least five to six days off of an average other wise healthy individual’s infected life when diagnosed with the flu.