Doctors are urging Americans aged 6 months and older to get vaccinated against the flu after an unusual early rise in cases on the West Coast that virologists are still working to understand.
Jennifer Duchon, a paediatric infectious disease expert at Mount Sinai Children’s Hospital in New York, adding that her hospital has started to see some flu cases. Promotion of flu shots has been reduced under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has engineered an overhaul of long-standing childhood vaccine schedules. The vaccine’s effectiveness fluctuates depending on how well it is matched months in advance to circulating flu strains. Typically, flu cases start in Southern states and move north.
The American Medical Association recommends the shot for all people 6 months and older. Over the past 10 years, it has been between 30% and 60% effective in reducing flu hospitalisations and deaths. Last year, an estimated 32 million Americans had the flu, 390,000 were hospitalised and 24,000 died.
“What people are a bit worried about is that the H1N1 strain this year hasn’t been seen by a lot of younger folk, so it may be more severe in them,” said Dr. This year, it’s coming from the west, said Caitlin Rivers, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who tracks pathogens in a weekly newsletter called Force of Infection. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he believes immunisation rates have been hurt by HHS’ decision to cut back on promoting flu shots, as well as by statements from Kennedy himself.
People who have been previously exposed to H1N1, either through infection or vaccination, would only have some residual protection from the older versions, scientists say.
