Professor: Health Workers Need to Encourage Flu Vaccination Among Patients.

Kim Shea has a simple message to health care workers: Tell your patients to get their flu shots.

“Vaccination is the single best tool to protect against influenza,” says the assistant professor of epidemiology. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees. The agency is renewing its call for widespread influenza vaccinations by reminding health professionals that all eligible patients should be vaccinated to help increase the number of people protected from flu.

Fewer than half of US residents 6 months and older have received a flu vaccine in the current influenza season. Estimates of past flu vaccine coverage have shown that the numbers of people getting flu vaccination drops after November, but influenza activity most often peaks between December and February, with significant circulation of flu viruses occurring as late as May.

The CDC reports that very little flu activity has occurred so far this season, but activity is expected to increase in January as people return from holiday travel.

Last flu season’s estimated 970,000 flu-associated hospitalizations were the most ever for a single flu season. While flu-associated hospitalizations range from season to season, the hospitalization rate among people 65 and older last season was the highest ever recorded in the Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network (FluSurv-NET), which began collecting hospitalization data a decade ago.

The rate of flu-associated hospitalizations among the elderly in the 2014–2015 season was 321 per 100,000, nearly double the previously recorded high of 183 per 100,000 people. According to the CDC, the elevated hospitalization rate among older people was the driving factor behind the elevated number of hospitalizations last season, when people 65 and older accounted for 78 percent of all hospitalizations.