Flu Vaccine Just 18% Effective This Year
Feb. 26, 2015 -- It’s no secret this year’s flu shots didn’t work as well as doctors had hoped. But the news got worse Thursday when the CDC revised its estimates of the flu vaccine’s effectiveness downward even further, from 23% to 18%.
That means for all ages, getting vaccinated cut the risk of needing medical treatment for flu symptoms by just 18%.
“That’s crummy, at best. This year was a bum year,” says William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease expert and a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN.
And there’s more bad news: Early numbers show that for the second flu season in a row, the FluMist nasal spray, aimed mainly at children, didn’t work at all for kids ages 2 through 8.
That was a bit awkward for the CDC, which had just advised doctors that they choose the nasal spray over the shot for younger kids. Previous studies had suggested that FluMist was more protective than injections for kids in this age group.