This Season’s Flu Shot

How scientists have worked to make the flu shot more effective.

This fall and winter's flu shot may have arrived or come soon in your neighborhood.

Don’t put off your shot. You might not think of it until people in your office or household are coming down with fevers, body aches and congestion — but the antibodies the vaccine stimulates take about two weeks to develop. Vaccination prevents millions of cases of flu each year.

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What’s new this season

The vaccines have been updated to match circulating viruses.

Options this year include:

• Standard dose flu shots. Like all inactivated influenza vaccines, these shots are given into the muscle, usually with a needle. Afluria Quadrivalent can be given to adults up to age 64 with a jet injector.
• High-dose shots for people 65 years and older.
• Shots made with adjuvant for people 65 years and older.
• Shots made with virus grown in cell culture. No eggs are involved in the production of this vaccine.
• Shots made using a vaccine production technology (recombinant vaccine) that does not require the use of flu virus.
• Live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV): a vaccine made with attenuated live virus that is received through a nasal spray.

All regular dose and recombinant flu shots will be Fluzone Quadrivalent, containing both of the two types of B virus.

Children from six months up to three may now receive either 0.25 milliliters of Fluzone Quadrivalent, the former dose, or 0.5 milliliters, the adult dose.

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Should you get a flu shot?

The CDC recommends that everyone over the age of six months — including pregnant women get vaccinated. (You can take an online quiz for a recommendation on which type and form of delivery would be best for you.) Some children 6 months through 8 years of age will require two doses of flu vaccine.

Over the years, the agency estimates, that vaccination has prevented more than 5 million cases of the flu in the season before last, about the population of metropolitan Atlanta.

Keeping up with viruses isn’t an easy job. Viruses are famous for their ability to mutate speedily, which means officials can’t predict the severity and length of the winter flu season. In the United States it may stretch from October through May. But even in the summer, the flu could be a possible cause of flu-like respiratory symptoms.

Don’t fear that you’ll get the flu from the shot — it does not contain live viruses, only proteins in the virus.  You may hear that it’s not safe to exercise before or after the shot, but a 2016 review of the research found no clear evidence. There’s also no need to worry about exposure to thiomerosal, a preservative that has caused controversy but is considered safe. To put people’s minds to rest, since 2001, officials removed thiomersol from vaccines in individual-dose bottles and nasal sprays.   

Some people might shrug that they’ll worry about the flu if they get it. However, antibiotics won’t help you — they fight bacteria, not viruses. And although there's a new anti-viral drug available, most people don’t get to the doctor in time. Every year, between 12,000 and 60,000 people in the United States die of the flu and 140,000 to 710,000 need hospitalization.  

You also can’t count on last year’s shot to protect you. The effect wears off after several months. And remember, the flu strains evolve. They change. Then change again. Let’s be thankful for the cadre of scientists working hard to track them.

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