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Up to 46,000 children are hospitalized for pediatric influenza each season, and many others are evaluated in emergency departments (EDs). To estimate the influenza vaccine's effectiveness against pediatric ED visits and hospitalizations for laboratory-confirmed influenza during the 2018–2019 season, researchers analyzed data from a seven-hospital surveillance network.
During that season, influenza A H1N1 predominated, and the circulating H2N3 strain was a poor match for the vaccine. Children aged 6 months to 17 years with an acute respiratory illness who visited an ED or were hospitalized were included in the study. Key findings include the following:
22% of 1944 patients evaluated in the ED and 13% of 1792 patients hospitalized tested positi…