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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is taking another step that will bring us closer to universal protection from the flu. The age for getting the vaccine is expanding even more, and the vaccine this year is completely new.
Vaccinating people who more easily spread influenza is getting closer to blanket coverage. This year the CDC is recommending flu shots for children all the way up to age 18.
Tamara Lewis, M.D., with the Utah Adult Immunization Coalition, said, "Children pass disease more than anybody else. We call them the vectors, the individuals who pass it from the kids they catch it from at school to their grandparents or to the infants in their home. And so, really, the next stage here is for us to be able to protect everybody."
What's coming next, perhaps in the next few seasons, is a time in which everybody, high risk or not, from six months of age on up to 100, will routinely get the vaccine.
We're told there's an abundance of vaccine this year, especially with the increased inventory, for those who will need a shot. One pediatric clinic, for example, has about 1,500 doses this early in the season.
Last year we got fooled with some variant strains that crept in. Even with a flu shot, people were getting sick. The CDC is assuring us that won't happen this year. "So all three of the strains within the year's vaccine are new strains to protect people from those that are most commonly circulating. And so this is really the best year to go out and get your vaccine, because it's all new," Lewis said.
As the CDC gradually moves to universal vaccinations, more and more people will be trained to give the shots in more places, and that distribution system, Lewis says, will be in place if and when a pandemic hits.
Flu shot clinics will officially begin vaccinating en masse in about four to five weeks.
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