This season’s flu shot offered virtually no protection against infection, a new government report shows.
While this latest vaccine only cut the risk of getting a mild case of flu by 16%, the agency has noted that flu vaccines typically reduce the risk of illness by 40% to 60%.
Still, the shot should offer some protection against more severe illness, according to the study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the findings mean the flu vaccine was “essentially ineffective,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., told NBC News.
Despite the vaccine’s meager level of protection, this flu season has been the second in a row to show low overall case counts. That may be because the surge of the Omicron variant in December and January had people wearing masks and practicing social distancing, thereby preventing the spread of the flu, Schaffner suggested.
He added that the latest CDC study highlights the need for better flu vaccines because “the flu is not going away. … It will be back again next year and the year after that and the year after that.”
