The flu is hitting children especially hard this season.
“This is really one of the worst flu seasons we’ve been seeing,” said Dr. Suchitra Rao, an infectious diseases physician at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that the rate of kids and teenagers hospitalized with flu nationwide is the second highest in 15 years for this point in the season.
Rao said her hospital has seen “record-breaking numbers of children with influenza.”
Last year, her team logged about 800 flu-related hospitalizations over the entire 2024-2025 season. In just the past three months, “we’ve already seen close to 600 hospitalizations,” Rao said. “We really don’t have signs that it is close to the end for us just yet.”
More than 80% of kids hospitalized so far with flu at Children’s Colorado have not had their flu shot. Kids who are vaccinated tend to have milder symptoms with shorter hospital stays, Rao said.
“The real message here is that flu vaccines this season have been working to prevent really severe complications,” she said.
But the nation's highest-ranking health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said this week that "there is no science that supports the flu shots for children."
"The Cochrane Collaboration, which is one of the ultimate arbiters of scientific knowledge, looked at a meta review of every major study that's out there, and they made that conclusion that there is no proven benefit for children getting flu shots," Kennedy told NBC News on Wednesday.
The most recent Cochrane review on the flu vaccine in children, which looked at evidence through 2016, found that the vaccine reduced the risk of infection and, to a lesser degree, getting sick from the infection.
More recent studies, listed on the CDC’s website as of Friday, also show that flu shots reduce the likelihood that children will get very sick from flu.
- A 2022 study showed that flu vaccination reduced children’s risk of severe, potentially deadly illness by 75 %.
- A 2020 study found the shots reduced flu-related hospitalization by 41% and emergency room visits by half among children.
- A 2017 study that encompassed four flu seasons concluded that the shot cut flu-associated deaths in otherwise healthy children by 65% and by 51% in children with underlying health problems.
The CDC’s report released Friday stated: “Influenza (flu) vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of flu and its potentially serious complications. There is still time to get vaccinated against flu this season.”
But the agency’s overall messaging on flu shots is changing.
On Monday, the CDC’s website said that “everyone 6 months and older, with rare exceptions, should get a flu vaccine.”
That same day, however, the Department of Health and Human Services overhauled the childhood vaccination schedule, removing the flu shot from its list of recommended vaccines.
By Friday, language on the CDC site changed to simply indicate that flu shots remained accessible should people opt to get them. “Flu vaccines are available for use in people aged 6 months and older during the flu season.”
The number of children getting flu shots has dwindled in recent years.
As of Dec. 27, the percentage of children who’ve got their flu shot this season was 42.5%. That’s the lowest recorded by the end of December since at least 2019, according to CDC records.
So far this season, 17 children have died of flu, according to the latest report. The 2024-2025 season was the deadliest on record, with 289 pediatric flu deaths.
Flu activity remains high across U.S.
Friday’s CDC report included data on the week ending Jan 3.
Hospitalization rates for all patients, both children and adults, have gone up by around 44% in the last week.
The weekly hospitalization rate for the week ending Jan. 3 was 40.6 per 100,000 people, up from 28.1 per 100,000 the week prior.
“The country is still experiencing elevated influenza activity,” the CDC wrote in its report, adding that activity “is expected to continue for several more weeks.”
Death rates are up as well, more than doubling in the latest report from 0.9% to 1.9%. The CDC estimates that 7,400 people have died of flu so far this season and 180,000 people have been hospitalized.
In New York City, more than half (54%) of people with flu this season have been children and teenagers younger than 18.
The flu season "hit hard and fast" in the Carolinas, said Dr. Katie Passaretti, chief infection prevention officer for Advocate Health in Charlotte. "Last year, we weren't at this point until late January or February."
People who haven't got a flu shot are most at risk to be hospitalized, she said.
“The majority of patients that end up in the hospital with flu are unvaccinated,” Passaretti said. “That’s a trend that we’ve seen in past years, and continue to see this year.”
