I think ive got it. Once again. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for coming thisht morning. I think it might be appropriate for us to pause for a second. I lost a good friend last night. Diane feinstein was a friend. Incredibly effective and extraordinary. We mourn i her loss in more than one way i can articulate this morning but a moment of silence and memory and all of her contributions to the country. For the past three years ive been privileged to serve as the chair of the coalition a multisector Advocacy Coalition dedicated to ending seasonal and pandemic influenza. An ambitious goal and one that we believe is achievable now may be more than ever. At the numbers are unified for the influence of the ecosystem that include organizations dedicated to Public Health, the patients advocacy, academics, Scientific Research and in addition to healthcare professionals. It also includes biotech companies, healthcare distributors, antiviral and diagnosticia manufacturing. The surge hit to young people especially hurt in childrens hospitals across the country struggled to keep up with the growing caseloads of kids waiting days for hospital bed in makeshift Holding Areas like always and playrooms. We could have and should have done better. This year cdc possibly center for forecasting and analytics is expecting perhaps a more typical respiratory disease this season. However this by no means is a good thing. Many of you have heard the phrase i know, as we have, its just the flu. What we forget as a nation and the flu kills up to 50,000 americans every year including many children. Its what makes a more tragic is many if not most of these deaths are preventable. That isnt enough. Blue results in up to 700,000 hospitalizations and many millions of illnesses each year costing over 10 million annually in excess and largely preventable medical costs. This is to say nothing of the economic burden to students, absent employees. This has led to one of our countries most predictable. Preventable Public Health crises. For many years the country has seemingly viewed this annual tragedy as inevitable. I want to share the sentiment of all of you. More can and must be done. Unfortunately this lack of National Urgency extends to another great threat to our country for pandemic influenza. For global influenza pandemics have been recorded in the past 100 years as most of us recall including one in 1918 which infected nearly one third of the world and killed at least 50 Million People. Imagine how much more deadly and influenza pandemic could be in todays globalized world. We no pandemics dont wait in line. We are currently in the midst of the Worlds Largest avian flu outbreak which has resulted in deadly outbreaks in mammals in addition to the deaths of tens of millions of herds. Love the current list humans is low how cannot always be the case . Is a matter of when not if the next influenza pandemic emerges and for all these reasons we are delighted to have the opportunity to host a briefing of the a 2324 influenza season in the federal governments role and influence of preparedness and response. Coke collision is releasing an afteraction report highlighting Lessons Learned for the next season. For those in the room i encourage you to pick up a copy if you havent already. After speakers will highlight the number of federal agencies in the fight against flu including the cdc and nih so we are lookingre forward today to hearing more about how the federal government has partners throughout the flu ecosystem working to respond to this flu season and prepare for another pandemic. With that i want to turn it over to my friend congressman rick larson. Rick has been an incredible partner and champion on influence and is a sponsor of the protecting america from seasonal and pandemic influenza after what we call the influence act. Its groundbreakingg legislation to make a meaningful and badly needed improvement for federal flu preparedness and response. The coalition is delighted that the bill has been introduced and we are incredibly grateful for the congressmans leadership and his presence here today. With that left me introduce the congressman. [applause] thanks tom and i appreciate the introduction and to want to thank you and the coalition and folks like the centers for Disease Control and others for reminding me to join you again this year and i want to thank the panelists as well for joining us. I joined your last december when the flu is in Washington State which is where im from and across the country. Sadly during the 2022, 2023s flu season was the deadliest flu season five years in Washington State and claimed the lives of 262 adults and children. The cdc estimates as tom mentioned as many as 50,000 americans died last year from the flu. That is more than the number of americans who died in Motor Vehicle accidents. Additionally as many as 640,000 americans were hospitalized with the flu as well. I never lose an opportunity to talk about the Transportation Committee and i do a lot of work on the Transportation Committee which is relevant because it supports the implementation of bison to makes historic investment in highway and Safety Response to highway and traffic fatalities. Investing in infrastructure to prevent fatalities is important work to do and similarly during as we enter another flu season we need to make a strong investment in the infrastructure to decrease the likelihood of seasonal pandemic flu as well and therefore decrease and eventually eliminate these clearly highly preventable deaths. Just as we do it on the road we can deal with the flu and we did. We can make that same commitment. Covid 19 pandemic demonstrates the u. S. Is not adequately prepared p for outbreaks of respiratory and other Infectious Diseases. Congress made progress last year and we were able to get a National Preparedness plan for Health Emergencies in the event of a pandemic however we will introduce the protecting america from seasonal pandemic influenza act of posting this comprehensive response to seasonal and pandemic flu specifically the bill increases access to vaccines strings vincennes diversifies Vaccine Development in the supply chain promotes research and development of new technologies to detect response to the flu and Congress Needs to continue to fully fund existing missions that save lives with preparedness and Innovative Research and mobile health and prevent harm. If congress does not act the next pandemic could be a flu pandemic. Dont take my wordta for it, we have experts here today, experts who will explain, demonstrate how important is that we respond and prepare and provide prevention to the millions of folks here in the united states. As well listen to the incredible women and men who are keeping people healthy and safe. Talk to your Health Care Provider and take your flu shot. I got mine yesterday right in time for this. I was scheduled for later in the month but i thought i better show up for this with my flu shot so i encourage folks to ask your Health Care Provider about that so thank you for being with us here today. We will continue to protect people from the flu and other Infectious Diseases. Advocacy makes all the difference so thank you again for inviting me to join you today and without as you can imagine i wont be sticking around. Very few other things going on in capitol hill and alternate back over to senator. Thanks. [applause] thank you rick for your leadership and your presentation and we wish you well as you confront the many challenges congress is facing today in particular. Our next speaker is dr. Vivian dipped in who serves asdi the director of the Cdcs National Center for immunization and respiratory diseases. She provides programmatic leadership and overall scientific and administrative management of the influence of divisions functions. Dr. Duke and earned a bachelor of science degree in science and master of science in Veterinary Technology and a ph. D. In Infectious Diseases from the college ofas veterinary medicine and shes been in not standing theater and we enjoy the opportunity to work with her. We have many supporters in this whole effort and we have the few champions. Ms. Larson and doctored duke in our two of our largest champions. Please welcome with me dr. Dug in. [applause] thank you so much senator zakrzewski and for those kind in part remarks. For all of our members here today we are in attending a briefing at aly crucial time during respiratory virus season. Not only myself. Elvis especially in our division at cdc are very grateful for the coalitions strongll commitmento raising awareness on influenza viruses unless prevention detection and all of our Panel Members here today commit to work hard on the Economic Impacts that influence a half. I want to start with a review of last season 2020 to come the end 2023 flu season. It was a good example of how unpredictable the flu can be. That demonstrate how we work so perilously with all of our Surveillance Systems and infrastructure. Its happening in a timely manner. The flu peaks in february in the u. S. And what they saw last year was an early season. The activity started in september and started ramping up in october and peaked in december which is much earlier than what we have seen. This was a the least three weeks before the earliest reported peak in 25 years and it was very a predictable. Our metrics that we used to assess the severity of the influence of season in a moderately severe flu season and we estimate these are numbers that w have not recently the 20222023 season of these 31 Million People were sick with the flu and 360,000 people were hospitalized with the flu and approximately 21,000 people died from influenza or flurelated complications. For some populations we have seen indications its more than a moderately severe season. Children as was mentioned in the state of washington. Adults 65 years or older were hospitalized at high rates for season followed by children who are younger than five years y o. Again the course when of the other numbers we track and in fortunes that number is we have had 10676 pediatric deaths last season and this number is about the seasonal average the third highest numberr for pediatric deaths during the seasonal flurt epidemic and started in early 2000. These numbers really serve as a sad and unfortunate and help social and Economic Impacts of the flu in the importance of vaccines. A little bit about vaccine effectiveness. Data on vaccine effectiveness of last season that the cdc shows the vaccine provided substantial protection against f the flu and flurelatd complications. In a report republished yesterday the flu vaccination prevented more than 66,000 flu hospitalizations last season in the u. S. So getting the flu vaccine is good at reducing the risk of hospitalization. In children air reduce the risk of children being hospitalized nearly threequarters are 75 and for adults 50 so getting that vaccine reduces that risk that youre going to the hospital. Wel. Are working very strongly o modernize the influence of vaccines especially 4h three and two viruses one of several that i have recommended here and those can cause more severe complications in children and put these numbers in estimates that we are looking at in retrospect flu vaccines are an important tool that we have that we need to do more with. The flu Vaccination Coverage in the u. S. Was lower than what we would like. Just under 50 of all adults in the u. S. Got a flu vaccine last year. We are working hard to address the drop in vaccinations that happened since the covid 19 pandemic preparedness people as well as children we have seen large decreases in the number of children and pregnant people getting vaccines especially for the flu and disparities. Im going to share a bit about that in a moment. As senator daschle mentioned the tripledemic as we saw with covid 19 influence then you will probably wonder if well have it again and thats a good question. We dont know whats going to happen. The course its unpredictable and we have other viruses now front and center of the flu circulating and we fully expect that we will see influenza active along with interstitial virus rsv as well as covid 19. When we look at what may happen this year we looked to what happened in the Southern Hemisphere. So is flu season somewhere and looking at that activity became precluded as to what might happen in the u. S. So we are looking at what circulating in the third hemisphere primarily each one influence of virus different than what we had here last year. Out at the 15 countries in the Southern Hemisphere that had the flu season only one country had cocirculating viruses of covid and rsv. We released a study of vaccine effectiveness of the net american countries last year 2023 we found people who got the flu vaccine were half as likely to be compromise with the flu is compared to those who did not get a vaccine. Again underscoring the fact that these vaccines to work and to prevent hospitalizations. The Southern Hemispheres not a perfect projector for what may happen here but we fully expect the fish the flu will show up probably next coming months and it will spread in the current season so its important to think about getting vaccinated. As we approached flu season this year in the u. S. Its really important to remember september and october now is the best time to get vaccinated. Many of us have been vaccinated or getting vaccinated now for influence a so if you havent gotten a flu vaccine for influenza we recommend and the cdc everyone six months over six months or older get the flu vaccine and to encourage that we have launched a new campaign called wild to mild. You seem to fire w some postcars we had a friendly pet flier circulating and we c also have a Flu Vaccine Campaign in collaboration with the ad council and the american medical association. Our campaign from wild to mild acute and wild animals in the i. T. Is getting a flu vaccine can decrease the chance they will have some kind of complication are hospitalization from influenza. We developed these educational tools and partnerships and focus groups and engage with consumers. Hopefully you can share some of the Digital Assets we have fun social media to get that message out. Their postcards available in social media tools. Before it closed i do want to get to influenza viruses with pandemic potential because as you know has a counterpart in the pandemic site soe while mot of the discussion today is all about seasonal influenza and seasonal flu viruses our readiness really never changes. We are always in the posture for any pandemic viruses that may evolve our move from animal populations into human so im grateful for those on our panel today. Keeping influenza pandemics front and center on everyones minds. Lest we forget whats happening in the background and senator bob daschle mentioned influenza has been for the past 12 years impacting at unprecedented rates so this is where the viruses are unpredictable and constantly changing. We continue to enhance or domestic preparedness to get ready for whatever may happen in whatever may evolve to become a threat to people. Through our domestic hospitalization and syndromic pandemic in our global work that we have built from partnerships and have that readiness search for a pandemic readiness as well. We closely monitor and analyze all the changes in the viruses that have been to push hard and sequencing which is a strong tool to help us know whats happening with viruses and also how we can track and get near realtime information to make vaccines available. We are partnering with the american Public Health to expand their sequencing capacities as well as not just as the cdc put across the u. S. And the Public Health web so we have the Capacity Building to know whats going on whats happening out there in our ecosystem. In closing that unpredictable nature of the flu and that lemming threat of a severe flu season keeps us on our toes as well as the risk of pandemic influenza really fortifies cdcs commitment to fighting the flu wherever and whenever its happening. We are very extremely grateful for the partnership in these efforts and i want to remind everyone knows a great time to get vaccinated from the flu and to protect those around you. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you dr. Dugan for that advice. Well articulated and i hope everyone can take all of those words seriously and act upon them. Now im pleased to introduce our other esteemed speakers who will join us for a panel discussion. Rounding out the panel joe blessing or a founding board member and treasurer of families fighting flu. He his family story is driven much of his work in providing his perspective on the frontlines of Public Health look like theyd we have dr. Gregory branch the Health Officer and director of the Baltimore County department of health. Finally we have dr. Lj tim chief of policy and Partnership Officer at the immunize. Org and cochair of the National A