Adolfo Garcia-Sastre

There is more than 100 potential pandemic flu viruses that could start the pandemic.

This shot that we are working on will protect not only against seasonal influenza,

not only of this year, not only against next year and next year and next year and this year, but also will prevent pandemic influenza from an animal reservoir.

But he says... The virus cannot change completely.

If not, we will not recognize it as influenza.

Yeah, so that's because the virus changes every year.

And when we are talking about human influenza, we're talking about three viruses right now.

Okay.

And that's the reason why the vaccine has three components.

So there is what they call the influenza A and influenza B. A comes also in two shapes right now in humans that are called H1 and H3.

And H refers to one of the proteins of the virus, the spike of the virus.

It is called hemagglutinin.

And that's H1 will be hemagglutinin subtype 1.

H3 will be hemagglutinin subtype 3.

All these three variants are circulating in people.

Some seasons, they are mainly H3s.

Some seasons, they are mainly H1s.

Some seasons, they are mainly B. But there is always H1s, H3s, and Bs causing infections in humans.

So we need three components, right?

But each one of these viruses change every year.