Updated flu vaccine guards against new strains

WASHINGTON -- Time to get your flu vaccine, and a surprising new report shows babies and toddlers seem to be getting protected better than the rest of us.

Last year's flu shot won't shield you this year: Two new strains of influenza have begun circling the globe, and the updated vaccine appears to work well against them, government officials said yesterday. Just because last year was the mildest flu season on record doesn't mean the virus might not bounce back to its usual ferocity this winter.

"People cannot become complacent this year," said Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who received his own flu shot yesterday.

A yearly vaccination now is recommended for nearly everybody, but new figures released yesterday show that last year 52 percent of children and just 39 percent of adults were immunized.

Best protected: Three-quarters of tots ages 6 months to 23 months were vaccinated. That's a significant jump from the previous year, when 68 percent of those youngsters were immunized.

But even though seniors are at especially high risk of severe illness or death if they catch the flu, just 66 percent of them were immunized, a number that has been slowly dropping for several years.

Older adults got a little lost in the recent public health push to explain that flu vaccine benefits all ages -- and it's time to target them again, said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, a flu specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In contrast, child deaths from flu have made headlines in recent years -- the U.S. counted 34 pediatric deaths last year -- raising parents' awareness of the risk, he said.

The only ones who shouldn't get vaccinated: babies younger than 6 months and people with severe allergies to the eggs used to make the vaccine. -- AP