A recent CDC study indicates that this season's flu vaccines are less effective at preventing outpatient visits in children, with only 32% effectiveness compared to last year's 67%. However, the vaccines maintain a high effectiveness of 63% against hospitalizations for children and 41% for adults. The decline in outpatient protection may be due to infection variability involving strains like H3N2, which accounted for a significant portion of infections. Previous immunity also affects vaccine performance, highlighting the complexity of flu shot effectiveness across different populations.
This season's influenza vaccines may have shown lower effectiveness against outpatient visits for children compared to last year, while still retaining high effectiveness against hospitalization.
The effectiveness of flu vaccines for hospitalization was at least 63% for children. However, effectiveness against outpatient visits dropped to a concerning 32%, down from 67% last year.
Differences in flu strain infections and the level of previous immunity among the population seem to play crucial roles in how effective the vaccines are in any given season.
CDC reports indicate that the flu vaccine this season was poorly matched against many strains of H3N2, which accounted for around half of flu infections.
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