This year’s flu vaccines were particularly effective for children, a CDC report finds

Children who were received the latest flu vaccines were less likely to get sick enough to end up in a hospital, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, underscoring the value of vaccines after this year’s cold weather season saw local children’s hospital ERs overwhelmed by a “tridemic” wave of respiratory illnesses.

This year’s flu vaccines were particularly effective for children, reducing their risk of hospitalization and emergency department visits, the CDC found in new data released this week.

The 2022 to 2023 flu season began earlier than usual and resulted in high rates of hospitalization among children. But vaccinated children were at a much lower risk of both illness and serious complications from the flu, the CDC reported in results from two studies carried out a hospital in Wisconsin between Oct. 23 and Feb. 10.

Vaccinated children, the CDC found, were 71% less likely to develop symptoms from the flu. Among children and adults younger than 65, those vaccinated against the virus were 54% less likely to require a doctor’s visit due to the flu.

In addition, data gathered from hospitals around the country, including Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, showed that flu vaccines reduced children’s risk of being hospitalized by nearly 75%. Among adults, vaccines dropped hospitalization risk by about 50%, the CDC says.

The findings stress the important of getting vaccinated, CDC officials said — especially during this flu season, when people received the shots at lower rates than seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. Flu vaccine rates among children, pregnant women, and rural Americans have been especially low, the CDC said.

In Philadelphia, as in much of the country, flu cases began rising this fall, peaking in the first week of December along with hospitalizations related to the flu. But case counts are currently low.

In Pennsylvania, officials confirmed positive 178,786 lab tests for the flu since the flu season began, and 110 people have died from the flu in the state.

The threat has now subsided from a so-called tridemic — a confluence of flu, COVID, and respiratory syntactical virus cases — that overwhelmed emergency departments in the region this winter. In December, emergency rooms at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children were slammed with children struggling to breathe.

By January, local doctors were encouraged by falling case counts and less crowded emergency rooms, though they stressed the importance of getting vaccinated against both COVID and the flu.