What Is The Flu Shot Made Of

Why Is The Flu Vaccine Recommended

While the flu vaccine isn’t 100% effective, it still greatly lowers a person’s chances of catching the flu, which can be very serious. It also can make symptoms less severe if someone who got the vaccine does still get the flu.

If you got the flu vaccine last year, it can’t provide enough protection this year, because flu viruses change. That’s why the vaccine is updated each year to include the most current types of the virus.

Sometimes the same virus types are included in the vaccine from one year to the next. Even then, it’s still important to get the yearly flu vaccine because the body’s immunity against the influenza virus declines over time.

Getting the flu vaccine not only protects you from the flu. It also helps protect the people and community around you. The flu vaccine makes someone less likely to get the flu, and therefore less likely to spread the flu. Getting the flu vaccine is a great way to protect people who are at risk from flu, such as the elderly, babies, and people with health conditions such as asthma. Every year thousands of people die from influenza, and getting the flu vaccine is one way to help prevent that.

Who Should Avoid The Flu Vaccine

The flu vaccine is very effective, but it isnt right for everyone.

Dont get the vaccine if youve had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient it contains, including egg protein.

You also should avoid the flu vaccine if youve had Guillain-Barré syndrome. In 1976, a swine flu vaccine was linked to an increased risk for Guillain-Barré, which causes the immune system to attack and damage the protective coating around nerve cells.

Guillain-Barré syndrome causes extreme weakness and tingling in the limbs, known as severe peripheral neuropathy. It can be life-threatening in rare cases.

Theres no clear link between the current flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré. If any risk exists, its very small, affecting about 1 out of every 1 million people vaccinated.

The vaccine also isnt recommended for babies under 6 months old because it hasnt been proven safe in infants.

Talk to your doctor if you have a weakened immune system, or if you take medicine to suppress your immune system. You may not respond as well to the vaccine.

If youre sick, you might want to put off the flu shot until you feel better.

Get The Flu Vaccine Before Flu Season Hits

Annual flu shots are recommended for anyone 6 months old and older. That means even if you had a flu shot last year, you should also receive this years vaccine.

Flu shots are usually available from early September through March. Heres what you should know about the flu vaccine and who should get one:

• Most people In general, people should get their flu shot by the end of October.
• Kids If your child is getting a flu shot for the first time, theyll need two doses at least 28 days apart. Try to get their first dose as soon as you can, so they can have their second dose before the end of October.
• Ages 65 and up When older patients get the flu, they are more likely to get very sick. We recommend getting a flu shot that is specially formulated for patients aged 65 and older as soon as you can.
• Pregnant people Getting a flu shot when youre pregnant is important. It can even keep your newborn baby healthier. So get your flu shot right away, especially if youre in your third trimester of pregnancy.
• People with egg allergies If you have an egg allergy, you can still be protected against the flu. Just let your doctor know you have egg allergies before getting the shot.

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Flu Vaccine And Coronavirus

Flu vaccination is important because:

• more people are likely to get flu this winter as fewer people will have built up natural immunity to it during the COVID-19 pandemic
• if you get flu and COVID-19 at the same time, research shows you’re more likely to be seriously ill
• getting vaccinated against flu and COVID-19 will provide protection for you and those around you for both these serious illnesses

If you’ve had COVID-19, it’s safe to have the flu vaccine. It will still be effective at helping to prevent flu.

Are Vaccines Alive Or Dead

Vaccines fall into three major types:

Live vaccines are made of living viruses or bacteria that are weaker than the normal germs that cause infections. They make a strong immune response because theyre similar to normal germs, but they dont cause infection because theyre weakened.

Dead vaccines are made with either killed viruses or bacteria or small parts of them. When used in a vaccine, these dead pieces of germs teach your immune system to defend the body against the living version of the germs.

Unlike the other two types, mRNA vaccines are neither live nor dead. They use new technology to deliver genetic instructions to the body for how to build its defense to a given germ.

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Who Should Have The Flu Shot

The Australian Government recommends that everyone over the age of 6 months has a flu vaccination every year.

Its difficult to predict who will catch influenza , or who will become seriously ill from it. The flu can require hospitalisation and can even be fatal.

Getting vaccinated against the flu helps protect both you and the people around you. Its particularly important to protect vulnerable people in the community who cant be vaccinated, such as babies who are younger than 6 months and adults with low immunity.

Antivirals: What To Do When You Already Have The Flu

When you come down with the flu, antiviral medicine can shorten its duration. The FDA has approved six influenza antiviral drugs in the U.S. But theyre all in somewhat short supply, so you might not be given them if youre not a child or elderly. This is why we get our flu shots, people!

The antiviral you probably already know goes by the brand name of Tamiflu, which you can get over the counter with relative ease even if youre not young or elderly. This drug, along with two others that work in the same manner , block an enzyme the virus needs to replicate. They can shave up to a day off your illness, but they need multiple doses to keep the drug working. Tamiflu, for instance, requires patients to take it twice a day for five days.

The newest antiviral, Baloxavir marboxil , is a single-dose antiviral drug approved in 2019 by the FDA. Baloxavir is for people with basic flu who are 5 years or older and have had symptoms for less than 48 hours. In a phase 2 trial published by The New England Journal of Medicine, it shaved off upwards of 28 hours of flu symptoms . This antiviral stands out in that its the only one that gets to the root of replication, messing with the virus RNA to stop it from reproducing. Also, its one of the only ones to come in a single dose, so you can pop it once and forget about it.

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What Is The Difference Between Fluzone High

Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent contains four times the antigen, the part of the vaccine that helps your body build up protection against flu viruses, than Fluzone Quadrivalent and other standard-dose inactivated flu vaccines. The higher dose of antigen in the vaccine is intended to give people 65 years and older a better immune response to vaccination, and therefore, better protection against flu. Both Fluzone High-Dose and Fluzone Quadrivalent are produced by the same manufacturer and are quadrivalent vaccines. There are a number of other flu vaccines produced by other manufacturers.

How Is The Flu Vaccine Made

In February and September each year, The World Health Organization holds a conference with leading experts and influenza centres from around the world to make recommendations about the composition of the next seasons flu vaccine.

They look at all the current information about influenza, including the recent patterns of flu epidemics across the world, to decide which strains of flu are likely to be most common in the next flu season. Vaccines are created to protect against these strains, usually containing three or four strain vaccines.

For countries in the Southern Hemisphere, like Australia, the information from the September conference helps them plan for flu vaccines for the following winter. After the conference, the Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee meet with the Therapeutic Goods Administration to confirm which strains will be included in the Australian flu vaccines. The vaccine funded for the National Immunisation Program in Australia contains the two strains of Influenza A most commonly circulating and the two Influenza B strains.

These vaccines then need to be made. Its a long and time consuming process, with large amounts of each virus strain needing to be created to make enough vaccine doses.

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Who Should Have The Vaccine

In the 2022/23 flu season, the flu vaccine will be available for free to the following groups in England:

• All children aged 2 to 10 years on 31st Aug 2022
• Secondary school children in years 7, 8 and 9 – any remaining vaccine will be offered to children in years 10 and 11, subject to vaccine availability
• Those aged 50-64 years
• Those in long-term residential care homes
• Frontline health and social care workers
• Close contacts of immunocompromised individuals
• Those aged 6 months to 65 years in at-risk groups including people with the following health conditions:
• Respiratory diseases, including asthma
• Heart disease, kidney disease or liver disease
• Neurological conditions including learning disability
• A severely weakened immune system , a missing spleen, sickle cell anaemia or coeliac disease
• Being seriously overweight

Your doctor may recommend the flu vaccine in other circumstances as well.

Note that the eligibility criteria for the 2022/23 season are different to those in the 2021/22 season, so some people who were eligible for the flu vaccine last year may not be eligible this year.

Babies under 6 months old are too young to receive a flu vaccine. This is because they have maternal antibodies passed on from their mother which prevent the vaccine from working so well. Flu vaccination is offered to all pregnant women in the UK . As well as protecting pregnant women themselves, this also helps to protect their newborn babies from flu.

Will There Be More Boosters In The Future

Its unclear whether this will be the last Covid booster offered, or whether there will be new boosters on a regular basis. The United States could offer the vaccine each year around the fall, similar to the flu vaccine, if the virus surges become predictable, Dr. Chin-Hong said.

But the pandemics trajectory has been anything but straightforward, and its hard to anticipate the state of the virus over the next few months, let alone the next few years. If the virus had not evolved, we probably would not need any new shots now, Dr. Crotty said, adding, Its really up to the virus.

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Key Facts About Seasonal Flu Vaccine

On June 30, 2022, CDC announced that Director Rochelle P. Walensky adopted the Decision memo approving the ACIP vote for a preferential recommendation for the use of higher dose or adjuvanted flu vaccines over standard-dose unadjuvanted flu vaccines for adults 65 years and older. CDCs full recommendations for the use of flu vaccines during 2022-2023 will appear in a forthcoming Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Edits to this page are also forthcoming. More information can be found online: CDC Director Adopts Preference for Specific Flu Vaccines for Seniors

Note: Prevention and Control of Seasonal Influenza with Vaccines: Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices United States, 2021-2022 Influenza Season has been . More information on the 2021-2022 season is also available.

What Types Of Flu Vaccine Are There

For the 20212022 flu season, all flu vaccines will be quadrivalent, which means they protect against four different flu viruses: an influenza A virus, an influenza A virus, and two influenza B viruses.

• Standard-Dose Shot Made with virus grown in chicken eggs, these shots are approved for those who are 6 months or older.
• Cell-Based Shot These contain viruses grown in a culture made from mammal cells they are approved for anyone who is at least 4 years old. This vaccine is egg-free.
• Recombinant Shot These are synthetically created, egg-free vaccines approved for people age 18 and older.
• High-Dose Shot These shots contain a higher dose of antigen to help create a stronger immune response they are approved for people age 65 and older.
• Shot Made With an Adjuvant Approved for people age 65 and older, these shots contain an ingredient called an adjuvant that helps create a stronger immune response.
• Nasal Flu Vaccine Also known as the flu mist, the nasal flu vaccine contains live virus and is given via the nose. It is approved for people age 2 through 49. Live flu vaccines should not be given to people who are pregnant or immunocompromised.

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Im Pregnant Is It Safe To Get The Flu Shot

Yes, the flu shot is safe. Those who are pregnant should be immunized. Infants born during flu season to mothers who got a flu shot are usually protected against the flu for a few months. The flu shot is also safe and highly recommended for those breastfeeding. Since infants less than 6 months of age cannot get the flu shot , antibodies against the flu are transferred through breast milk.

How The Flu Vaccine Is Made

• The flu vaccine contains three or four strains of flu type A and B viruses.
• These viruses are injected into eggs or added to cell cultures, where they’ll grow and multiply.
• After that, the viruses are killed or weakened for the vaccine.
• This article was reviewed by Graham Snyder, MD, MS, who is the medical director for the Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology branch at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
• This story is part of Insider’s Flu Shot Guide.

For the 2019-20 flu season, more than 162 million doses of flu vaccines will be made in the US, alone.

The flu vaccine may only be widely distributed during certain months, but creating it is a year-round process.

These vaccines are the result of months of careful research and planning to produce the most effective vaccine possible. Here’s the process from start to finish.

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Your Questions On The New Covid Vaccine Boosters Answered

Sometime this weekend or early next week, pharmacies and doctors offices are going to start to receive Covid-19 boosters that have been reformulated to include protection against one of the sub-variants of Omicron.

These boosters, from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech as well as from Moderna, are bivalent shots. They target two strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, both the original strain that all previous vaccines have protected against, and the Omicron sub-variants BA.4/BA.5.

These products received emergency authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday. On Thursday evening, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on the recommendation made earlier in the day by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, that the newly formulated vaccines be used.

Now that these updated vaccines are a reality, you probably have some questions about who can get them, who cant get them, and when you should time your appointment, if youre going to make one.

We have some answers.

How is this shot different from the ones weve had before?

All previous Covid shots have only targeted one version of SARS-2, the original strain sequenced in early January 2020. As you know, the virus has mutated a lot since then, with a variety of variants and sub-variants having emerged.

Why You Need A Flu Vaccine In 2022

Last year, experts warned that the 2021-2022 flu season would be bad, largely because they thought the flu would make a comeback as many people dropped COVID precautions. That prediction didnt pan out. Last years flu season was actually more mild than many pre-pandemic flu seasons.

This year, experts are prediction the same thing: We could be facing a tough 2022-2023 flu season. And theres reason to think that this time, they could be right.

The flu season in the Southern Hemisphere, which lasts from about April to October, usually predicts what we in the Northern Hemisphere can expect come fall and winter. And currently Australia is seeing surging flu numbers for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to NBC News. The season also started early in the country another bad sign and hit children harder than adults.

Without exposure to the flu over the last several years, people may also be more vulnerable than usual this season.

And although the flu has been around for some time and doesnt invoke the same fear as COVID or, say, monkeypox, it is crucial to protect your family from the flu. One-hundred ninety-nine kids were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to have died from flu during the 2018-2019 flu season alone, and statistical modelling suggests that 434 children may have actually died from the flu that season. And the flu kills thousands of adults aged 18 to 49 each year and sends tens of thousands to the hospital .

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