The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending annual influenza vaccination for every child aged 6 months and older without a medical contraindication, guidance released as families begin back-to-school appointments and after a season in which 190 U.S. children died of flu.
The recommendation itself is not new. What gives it weight this year is the gap between the advice and the behavior. Fewer than half of American children were vaccinated against influenza last season, a rate close to the year before, and historically about 85 percent of children who die of flu have not been vaccinated.
