Flu vaccine recommendation expanded through age 18

News out of this week's ACIP meeting in Atlanta that the committee voted today to expand its influenza vaccine recommendation to include all children and teenagers up to age 18. Previously, the recommended pediatric population only included children between 6 months and 5 years of age. Here's the CDC announcement about the expanded recommendation; it notes that approximately 30 million children are affected.

Here's coverage from the New York Times, CIDRAP News, and the Associated Press. The AP story reports that of the 36,000 annual influenza deaths in the U.S., only 25-50 occur in the 5-18 population. (Of course, preventing deaths is only one goal of expanded vaccination efforts.)

With some in the medical and public health communities advocating a universal recommendation, i.e., that all Americans receive the vaccine annually, the new recommendations (once fully implemented) will include essentially all Americans under age 18 and over age 50, in addition to a host of specific groups at higher risk of influenza morbidity or mortality.

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Today's announcement follows several weeks of bad news about the severity of the current flu season and issues with this year's vaccine failing to match a significant percentage of the circulating strains. Earlier this month, WHO recommended a wholesale redesign of the composition of the 2008-9 influenza vaccine -- replacing all three strains in the current season's vaccine. Here's the WHO report (pdf) and a CDC Q&A explaining the process by which the annual composition of the vaccine is determined. As is standard practice, the identical three strains were also recommended by the relevant FDA advisory committee at their meeting last week. Here's a related CIDRAP News story.

This link includes the most recent weekly report from CDC on influenza activity in the U.S., just part of the vast amount of information and resources available at its seasonal flu website.