WHO FVIVA: What could next-generation influenza vaccines mean for influenza vaccination in countries?

Colleagues,

WHO has released the Full Value of Improved Influenza Vaccines Assessment (FVIVA), looking at the potential health, economic and policy impacts of next-generation influenza vaccines that offer broader and longer-lasting protection than current seasonal products.

Some key takeaways that may be relevant for national immunization programmes and partners:

• Substantial projected public health impact: Modelled scenarios suggest tha widespread use of improved influenza vaccines between 2025–2050 could avert up to 18 billion influenza cases and prevent up to 6.2 million influenza-attributable deaths globally, particularly among high-risk groups (older adults, young children, pregnant women).
• Beyond seasonal effectiveness: Existing seasonal influenza vaccines demonstrate variable effectiveness across seasons and population groups, are contingent on accurate strain selection, and provide protection largely limited to a single influenza season. Next-generation vaccines with broader antigenic coverage and longer duration of protection could reduce inter-annual variability in effectiveness and reliance on precise strain prediction.
• Equity, access, and programmatic feasibility: FVIVA highlights persistent inequities in access to seasonal influenza vaccination, with coverage concentrated in upper-middle- and high-income countries. Maximizing the impact of influenza vaccines may benefit from applying context-specific delivery approaches, identifiying priority populations and optimal delivery strategies, alongside efforts to address affordability, cold-chain and storage requirements, supply security, and alignment with routine immunization platforms in low- and middle-income countries
• AMR co-benefits: Reductions in influenza incidence and influenza-associated secondary bacterial infections are projected to avert up to 1.3 billion defined daily doses of antibiotics globally between 2025–2050, contributing to broader AMR mitigation efforts.
• Determinants of implementation and impact: Country-level adoption and population-level impact will be influenced by product characteristics (safety profile, duration of protection, thermostability, and shelf-life), pricing and procurement mechanisms, health system capacity, regulatory pathways, and integration within existing immunization strategies.

Question for the community: What evidence gaps would be most useful to address now to support future policy decisions (e.g. burden data, cost-effectiveness, delivery feasibility)?

Looking forward to hearing experiences and perspectives from different regions.

Thanks, and hope this is helpful.