Jia Mi, Juping Wang, Luping Chen, Zihao Guo, Hao Lei, Marc KC Chong, Jiangatai Talifu, Shengmei Yang, Kamuranni Luotebula, Maierhaba Ablikemu, Chunyu Ma, Wenli Lu, Zhaohui Luo, Chuanfa Liu, Shengzhi Sun, Jianghong Dai, Kai Wang, Kailu Wang, and Shi Zhao
In the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, influenza virus infections continuously lead to a global disease burden. Evaluating vaccine effectiveness against influenza infection is crucial to inform vaccine design and vaccination strategy. In this study, we recruited 1120 patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) who attended fever clinics of 4 sentinel hospitals in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, from January 1 to April 7, 2024. Using a test-negative design, we estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) of 54.7% (95% CrI: 23.7, 73.1) against medical-attended influenza infection, with 62.3% (95% CrI: 29.3, 79.8) against influenza A, and 51.2% (95% CrI: 28.7, 83.0) against influenza B. Despite the moderate VE estimated in this study, influenza vaccination remains the most important approach to prevent influenza at the community level.