Virtually Everyone Should Get a Flu Shot: CDC

The recommendation will take effect for the next influenza season

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, Feb. 25 (HealthDay News) -- All Americans 6 months of age and older should get a flu shot each year, a panel of U.S. advisers is recommending.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted Wednesday to expand the current recommendations on who should get a flu shot to include almost everyone.

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Already, "the recommendations as they stood before the vote included 85 percent of all Americans," said CDC spokesman Richard Quartarone.

The new recommendation will take effect for the 2010-11 flu season, he said.

Part of the reason the committee decided to expand the recommendation was to remove confusion about who did and who did not need to be vaccinated, Quartarone said.

He said that patients and doctors were often not sure whether a flu shot was appropriate, and physicians would have to question patients to determine whether he or she needed a shot.

Now there should be no confusion, Quartarone said: "There is general consensus that it is important for everyone to get vaccinated against the flu."

But one infectious disease expert expressed skepticism at the new plan. Dr. Pascal Imperato, dean of the School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, New York City, said the CDC's recommendation fails to take into account that holdups in vaccine production and supply have occurred in the recent past.

"During the 2009-2010 flu season, shortfalls in vaccine supplies gave rise to frequent changes in CDC recommendations as to which groups were eligible for immunization at given periods of time," Imperato noted. "Thus, vaccine supplies became a major determinant of vaccination recommendations."

And while the new recommendations attempt to simplify a complex situation, "any shortage of vaccine will inevitably result in a return to prioritization of vaccine recipients based on age and pre-existing conditions," Imperato said. "The current change in recommendations is based on an assumption that these issues are unlikely to arise. Yet, they have unpredictably done so in the past."

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