DRIVE’s yearly results report, which has been submitted to IMI and EMA, is now available on the DRIVE website. However, considering the unprecedented pandemic and the associated stringent measures and non-pharmaceutical interventions put in place to address the public health crisis, the circulation of non-COVID-19 respiratory viruses (including influenza) was very limited during the last season, a well-established phenomenon in Europe.
Consequently, and unlike previous seasons, DRIVE faced challenges during the 2020/21 season in identifying influenza cases and collecting the necessary data for influenza vaccines effectiveness (IVE) analysis. The number of influenza positive cases reported in DRIVE was extremely low and did not allow the Test Negative Design pooled analyses to produce estimates on brand-specific IVE. IVE estimates were calculated for the population aged 65 years and above from the Finnish register-based cohort study but confidence intervals were too wide to draw any conclusions.
Find the full report here
