Debate Continues Over Flu Vaccine Strategies

Additionally, vaccination prevented 78% of deaths, 87% of hospitalizations, and 26% of GP visits among high-risk adults. And among elderly subjects, vaccination prevented 50% of deaths and 48% of hospitalizations.

“The results of our study lend strong support for the view that all high-risk persons benefit from annual influenza vaccination, regardless of age,” the authors said.

Vaccinating Children

But with such low vaccination rates in high-risk populations, vaccination strategies should be reconsidered, according to a commentary published in a separate journal (Am. J. Epidemiol. 2005;161:303–6).

Targeting school-aged children—the group most responsible for community-wide transmission—while maintaining immunization in high-risk and elderly individuals could greatly curtail the spread of influenza in the general population, according to Ira M. Longini Jr., Ph.D., and M. Elizabeth Halloran, M.D., of Emory University in Atlanta.

Mathematical models and evidence from community trials suggest that by vaccinating school-aged children, transmission can be reduced in the entire community, they reported.

“The best strategy for minimizing the number of influenza deaths and morbidity … would be to concentrate vaccine in the high-risk and high-transmitting population groups simultaneously,” they said. This could be achieved by targeting 70% of schoolchildren, as well as high-risk groups.