When asked why they opt to skip the flu shot, people often say they’re skeptical that the vaccine works, concerned – wrongly – that the vaccine could cause the flu or other side effects, or they don’t consider themselves or their children at risk.
“Each and every year influenza comes. And each and every year unfortunately we have children who will die from influenza, and it’s not always children who have underlying medical illnesses, sometimes it is perfectly healthy children,” said Marian Michaels, M.D., MPH, pediatric infectious disease doctor at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
For the study, which was led by the CDC, the researchers analyzed records of 1,792 hospital inpatients and 1,944 emergency department patients who were treated for respiratory disease at seven pediatric medical centers across the country during the 2018-2019 flu season.
The flu vaccine reduced hospitalizations and emergency department visits by 40%–60% among children who contracted the virus, despite the fact that the flu vaccine was not well matched with the circulating strains that year.
“There are so many diseases that we don’t have the ability to do something about, to intervene, but here we have a vaccine,” Michaels said. “It’s not perfect, but it works, and anything we can do to try to prevent death and hospitalization and emergency room visits we should do.”
