ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1615503
Influenza: temporal trends in mortality, hospitalization, and vaccination in the elderly population aged 60 and more years, Brazil, 2000-2023
Provisionally accepted
ERLY MOURA1,2*
Juan Jose Cortez-Escalante3
Fabrício Vieira Cavalcante1,2
Leonor Maria Pacheco Santos1,2Wallace Enrico Boaventura Gonçalves Dos Santos1,2- 1Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Brasília, Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil
- 2Departmente of Collective Health, Brasilia, Brazil
- 3Pan American Health Organization, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective To evaluate the temporal evolution of mortality rates, hospitalization, and vaccination coverage for influenza among the population ≥ 60 years of age in Brazil from 2000 to 2023. Methods A descriptive study with secondary and anonymous data from the Ministry of Health was collected year by year to calculate the rates. Data on the composition of the vaccines were also obtained. Results The data pointed to: 1) an increase in deaths from influenza, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, but a decrease in 2023 with the registration of 2.5 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants; 2) reduction in hospitalizations for influenza, but increase during the Covid-19 pandemic and decrease in 2023, with a record of 22 hospitalizations per 100 thousand inhabitants; 3) linear growth in vaccination coverage, reaching 99.4% in 2019, exceeding 100% in 2020 and a sharp drop in subsequent years, reaching the lowest value in the series (63.3%) in 2023; and 4) formulation of vaccines containing three different strains in all campaigns. Conclusion The impact of Covid-19 on mortality and hospitalization rates from 2020 beyond is evident. The role of the federal government in controlling pandemics and the importance of vaccination, among other measures, are highlighted. Currently, the challenge is to increase immunization against influenza, a disease with low mortality and hospitalization rates for the population of this study, but with high transmissibility in the general population, with an impact not only on health, but also on social and economic health.
Keywords: influenza, Mortality, Hospitalization, Vaccine, elderly population
Received: 21 Apr 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 MOURA, Cortez-Escalante, Vieira Cavalcante, Santos and Dos Santos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: ERLY MOURA, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Brasília, Brasília, 70910-900, Distrito Federal, Brazil
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.