Flu vaccine uptake is up a bit, and the vaccine prevented 6.6 million cases last season, the CDC said.
The biggest push to vaccinate children in seven Middle Eastern countries against polio starts this week, with a goal of reaching 23 million kids in Syria and neighboring nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today. The campaign aims to reach all children under age 5 over the next few months, whether they live at home or in displaced populations.
Saudi Arabia's health ministry today announced two more Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infections, one of which appears to be in a health worker with an asymptomatic infection who had contact with a confirmed case, according to a machine-translation of a statement posted on the ministry's Web site.
Flu vaccination coverage among US patients with asthma was almost 50% in the 2010-11 season, fully 12 percentage points higher than among those without asthma, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
The influenza vaccine did not reduce the risk of hospitalization for flu after vaccine failure, according to an analysis of 8 years of data published yesterday in Vaccine.
Flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) varied from 44% to 53% over the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons among pregnant women, and getting a flu shot the previous year appeared to be just as effective as getting the current year's vaccine, according to a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases today.
Development of a national flu vaccination program in China is complicated by the differing flu seasons in various parts of the vast country.
The flu vaccine was 47% effective against medically attended flu for all influenza strains in the 2011-12 season, and being vaccinated the year before lowered effectiveness, according to a study yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A 10-year-old boy from Kampot province in Cambodia who was reported to have H5N1 avian flu last week has died, The Cambodian Daily reported today. The boy is the second child to die from the disease in the country in 2 weeks.
Personal reminders likely help boost flu vaccine uptake in the elderly, but other data are scant.
