This year’s flu shot will be missing a strain of influenza it’s protected against for more than a decade.

That’s because there have been no confirmed flu cases caused by the Influenza B/Yamagata lineage since spring 2020. And the Food and Drug Administration decided this year that the strain now poses little to no threat to human health.

Scientists have concluded that widespread physical distancing and masking practiced during the early days of COVID-19 appear to have pushed B/Yamagata into oblivion.

Read more at NPR.

Folks who want solid protection during the cold and flu season should get the influenza vaccine now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says.

The ideal time to get the flu vaccine is by the end of October, the FDA said in a news release.

“Flu viruses typically spread in fall and winter, with activity peaking between December and February,” the agency added. “Getting vaccinated in the fall can lower your chances of getting the flu.”

Each year’s flu vaccine targets the three influenza strains that are most likely to circulate and cause illness in the United States, the FDA said.

Read more at U.S. News.

COVID and flu season is coming sooner than you might think, and getting up to date with vaccines is the best way to protect yourself in the months ahead. This year’s COVID vaccine is a little different from previous versions, not to mention that there are three different options for your shot this year (more on that in a moment). So it’s safe to say that you may have some questions before making your appointment, including, “What are the new COVID booster side effects?”

To help you be informed before you get your annual jab, we tapped experts to answer all of your burning questions. Here’s what you need to know about the new vaccine, plus potential side effects to keep in mind.

Read more at Prevention.

Highly contagious respiratory illness whooping cough is making a comeback in Colorado after three years of a significant decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rates of pertussis — colloquially referred to a “whooping cough” — in Colorado decreased roughly 80% from 2020 through 2023, but now appear to be returning to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’ve seen an increase compared to what we saw in the pandemic,” said Grace Nelson, a disease intervention unit supervisor with the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment. “It’s kind of a return to baseline.”

Read more at The Denver Gazette.

Once a week, early in the morning, community health worker Kiden Josephine Francis Laja mounts her bicycle and pedals as far as 10 miles away from her small village in South Sudan. Some weeks Laja is doing outreach, spending her day educating a community about which vaccines she can provide and what diseases they prevent. “It’s my responsibility to tell the mothers to bring the children for vaccination,” she says. She answers their questions and lets them know she’ll be back, usually the following week, to vaccinate their children. Late in the evening she mounts her bike and heads home.

Read more at Scientific American.

Whooping cough is spreading nationwide at the highest levels since 2014. There have been more than 16,000 cases this year — more than four times as many compared to the same time last year — and two confirmed deaths. And experts are concerned that the outbreak could worsen in the fall and winter months.

“More children are going back to school now, [which leads to] greater exposure,” said Dr. Eric Chow, the chief of epidemiology and immunization at the Seattle and King County public health agency. “We’re coming up on the kind of winter season when people are spending more time indoors with other people.”

Read more at NPR.

Believe it or not, living until age five used to be difficult. And it wasn’t that long ago. In the early 1900s, 30% of all deaths in the U.S. occurred in children under five, according to data. Thankfully, that number has since declined sharply. In 1999, 1.4% of deaths in the U.S. were in children under age five—still a tragedy, but the significant progress is important and, in large part, because of vaccines.

About 2.5 million deaths in children under age five were prevented because of measles, polio and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccines, the CDC reports. 

Read more at Parade.

U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Tuesday.

The share of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 3.3 percent, up from 3 percent the year before. Meanwhile, 92.7 percent of kindergartners got their required shots, which is a little lower than the previous two years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic the vaccination rate was 95 percent, the coverage level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

The changes may seem slight but are significant, translating to about 80,000 kids not getting vaccinated, health officials say.

Read more at PBS.

On Monday, the Director of Infection Prevention for UCHealth said vaccination rates have been down since the COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation about vaccines is the main cause.

According to health officials, post-pandemic vaccination rates have yet to reach herd immunity, meaning a large enough amount of people have vaccines to create immunity in the community. The main viruses of focus during flu season are Covid-19, Influenza, and RSV.

Officials say these low rates are especially true for young kids and students. The target percentage is 95% but for K12 students across Colorado vaccine rates were at 90.1%. One of the lowest school districts in the state was Colorado Springs School District 11 which had rates of 85%.

Read more at KKTV.

The number of kids dying from influenza in the 2023-2024 season has set a new record for a regular flu season, after one new death was reported last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There were 200 pediatric flu-related deaths in the 2023-2024 season, compared to the previous high of 199 during the 2019-2022 season.

About 80% of the kids that died from flu this season were not fully vaccinated against influenza, CDC data shows. Nearly half of the children had at least one pre-existing medical condition.

Read more at ABC.