According to reports released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, the vaccine developed to fight against the onset of the flu virus is quite inefficient as its efficiency drops to almost 25 % which is quite less compared to the average 50 % to 60 % effectiveness of the vaccine.
The vaccine this year has been quite a poor match for the virus that’s infecting most people. As a result doctors and public health experts are aggressively adopting the use of antiviral drugs to treat influenza. This has primarily been the routine case especially for the most sickly and vulnerable patients.
According to health experts the flu vaccine is only 50 % to 60 % effective when the flu shot matches well to the influenza strains that are commonly in circulation.
And this ineffectiveness results in more people getting sick as a result of flu this year. In addition to this, those who get sick even have more pronounced symptoms as well. Therefore the CDC has issued routinely notifications to doctors and health practitioners in order to give antivirals to all patients who are hospitalized in particular due to flu.
It’s not easy to tell who is suffering from flu without lab tests whose reports come after a day or two. But a person who is all of a sudden suffering from severe aches and high fever coupled with some respiratory complaints, all in one time then this mostly sounds like flu and the person of this sort should be treated right away, said Dr. David Bush who is the chief of the infectious diseases division in the Department of Medicine at California Pacific Medical Center.
