Gains seen in health care workers’ flu vaccination rate

Abstract

Forty-nine percent of health care workers reported being vaccinated against seasonal influenza by mid-November, and 12% more planned to be vaccinated, according to a survey conducted by the nonprofit RAND Corporation. Those figures, if comparable to national surveillance data, are an improvement over federal estimates that approximately 40% of U.S. health care workers typically receive an influenza vaccination each year. The RAND data also suggest that the country may meet its Healthy People 2010 goal of achieving a 60% influenza vaccination rate among health care workers. “It appears that health care workers responded very early and enthusiastically when seasonal influenza vaccine became available, more so than in previous years,” said William Schaffner, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and president-elect of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID). “I am optimistic that this bodes well for the next influenza season. I hope we can build on this going forward,” Schaffner said.