As October begins, health experts highlight the importance of timely flu shots and updated COVID-19 vaccines, with renewed focus on vulnerable groups amidst shifting official guidance and ongoing respiratory virus season.
October has arrived, and with it the annual push for flu vaccination before influenza begins to circulate widely. Doctors are also urging families to think beyond flu alone, with updated COVID-19 shots now available and additional protection recommended for people at higher risk from respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, as the autumn virus season gets under way.
Medical groups say the timing matters. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has long advised annual flu vaccination for everyone aged six months and older, and it says September and October are the best months to get protected. But this year, the usual federal guidance has been complicated by a court dispute involving the CDC’s advisory panel, leaving professional societies to publish their own recommendations for patients. Those groups include the American Academy of Paediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The message from those organisations is broadly the same: most people should get a flu shot, and some groups need it most. That includes adults 65 and older, pregnant women, young children and people with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease or weakened immune systems. The CDC says flu vaccination can lower the chance of illness, medical visits, hospitalisation and death, and a CDC study published in December 2023 found that vaccination during the 2022-23 season cut the risk of emergency department and urgent care visits by nearly half among adults, while reducing hospitalisations by more than a third.
Doctors say the protection is not perfect, but it is still worth having. Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician and spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, told The Associated Press that a vaccine is not a guarantee against infection, but it works much like a seatbelt by lowering the risk of the worst outcomes. The urgency is sharpened by recent seasons: flu has caused hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations and tens of thousands of deaths a year in the United States, and child deaths have been unusually high in the past two flu seasons, with most of those children unvaccinated, according to medical groups and public health data.
COVID-19 guidance is more complicated than it once was. The Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the latest shots only for people at higher risk, including adults 65 and older and younger people with at least one condition that raises the chance of severe illness. Even so, family physicians still recommend vaccination for all adults, particularly older people and those with other risk factors. For adults 65 and over, some doctors advise a fall dose followed by a second dose six months later, as immunity can fade over time. For parents and caregivers, the broader advice is simple: in the weeks ahead, vaccination is the best way to reduce the chance that a routine autumn virus turns into something far more serious.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical judgment, advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
