It’s the holiday season, which means it’s also flu season, and cases are up. New CDC figures showed an 8% increase in people testing positive for flu in the week ending Dec. 6, and visits to health-care providers for respiratory illnesses were up 3%.
CBS News medical contributor Dr. Céline Gounder, editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, said the most commonly circulating strain right now is H3N2. The flu vaccine is designed to protect against the strains expected to circulate — usually three strains — and is effective: it gives pretty good protection in children and moderate protection in adults against hospitalization. Crucially, she stressed, the vaccine is an important layer of protection against the worst outcomes, including hospitalization and death, especially for very young and very old people.
Some reports call this a “super flu” because of mutations in H3N2. Dr. Gounder said the mutations make the virus somewhat more resistant to immunity and to vaccine protection, but not in a way that would cause a pandemic. Vaccines may be less effective against H3N2 than against other strains, yet international data (for example from England) show they still offer substantial protection against severe disease. That means people may still get infected after vaccination, but they are much less likely to end up in the hospital.
On the topic of messages people forget, she emphasized that the flu shot’s main benefit is guarding against severe illness, not guaranteeing you won’t get any infection at all.
Dr. Gounder also discussed recent reporting that the FDA may add black-box warnings to COVID vaccines. A black-box warning is the most serious kind the FDA can issue. She described a memo circulated internally by a senior FDA official that suggested up to 10 children might have died from COVID vaccines; after review that estimate was reduced to between zero and seven possible deaths. She put those numbers in context: more than 2,100 children died from COVID overall. There is always a trade-off between risks and benefits with any medical intervention, and she noted that some of the current scrutiny has a political dimension as agencies review pandemic-era measures in hindsight.
Bottom line: flu cases are rising this season, H3N2 is the dominant strain and has mutations that may reduce but do not eliminate vaccine protection. Getting vaccinated remains an important step to reduce the risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
