This season’s flu vaccine offers meager protection against mild cases of influenza, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
Against the most common flu strain circulating this season, the flu shot reduced a person’s chance of getting a mild case by 16 percent, which is “considered not statistically significant,” the CDC authors wrote, though the shots should offer some protection against more severe illness.
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Put more bluntly, the flu vaccine was “essentially ineffective,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Indeed, research from earlier in the flu season found that the vaccine was a poor match for the H3N2 strain of the virus. That study, from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, was posted as a pre-print, meaning it had not been peer-reviewed.
Read more at NBC News.