Vaccination campaigns usually focus special attention on people who are at high risk of serious complications if they catch the flu, such as pregnant women, children under 59 months, the elderly, and people with chronic illnesses or weakened immune systems, as well as those to whom they are exposed, such as health care workers.As the death rate is also high among infants who catch influenza, the CDC and the WHO recommend that household contacts and caregivers of infants be vaccinated to reduce the risk of passing an influenza infection to the infant.In children, the vaccine appears to decrease the risk of influenza and possibly influenza-like illness. In children under the age of two data are limited. During the 2017–18 flu season, the CDC director indicated that 85 percent of the children who died "likely will not have been vaccinated".In the United States, as of January 2019, the CDC recommend that children aged six through 35 months may receive either 0.25 milliliters or 0.5 milliliters per dose of Fluzone Quadrivalent. There is no preference for one or the other dose volume of Fluzone Quadrivalent for that age group. All persons 36 months of age and older should receive 0.5 milliliters per dose of Fluzone Quadrivalent. As of October 2018, Afluria Quadrivalent is licensed for children six months of age and older in the United States. Children six months through 35 months of age should receive 0.25 milliliters for each dose of Afluria Quadrivalent.
Universal flu vaccines
A "universal vaccine" that would not have to be designed and made for each flu season in each hemisphere would stabilize the supply, avoid error in predicting the seasons variants, and protect against escape of the circulating strains by mutation. Such a vaccine has been the subject of research for decades.One approach is to use broadly neutralizing antibodies that, unlike the annual seasonal vaccines used over the first decades of the 21st century that provoke the body to generate an immune response, instead provide a component of the immune response itself. The first neutralizing antibodies were identified in 1993, via experimentation. It was found that the flu neutralizing antibodies bound to the stalk of the Hemagglutinin protein. Antibodies that could bind to the head of those proteins were identified.