Flu season is on the horizon, generally arriving with fall and running through winter. As they generally do this time of year, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued new vaccination guidelines for the coming season.
But this year, there is new guidance for people with egg allergy that makes the process of vaccination easier:
All persons ages ≥6 months with egg allergy should receive influenza vaccine. Any influenza vaccine (egg based or non-egg based) that is otherwise appropriate for the recipient’s age and health status can be used.
Egg allergy necessitates no additional safety measures for influenza vaccination beyond those recommended for any recipient of any vaccine, regardless of severity of previous reaction to egg.
“Data now shows that people who are egg-allergic really do not have a major contraindication to egg-based flu vaccines,” said Dr Amesh A Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
While this guidance is new for the US, it is standard practice in much of the world. “The U.S. has now caught up to the Canadians and Europeans, who for some time have looked at the data regarding rare but serious allergic reactions with the flu vaccine and have come to the conclusion that eggs have almost nothing to do with it,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, says.
