NHS England has written to all GPs warning that the vaccine has ‘showed no significant effectiveness in this group over recent seasons’.
From next autumn, family doctors should instead adopt an injection used by other European countries for the last 20 years, but which will not be available in Britain until the 2018-19 flu season.
Until then the elderly will have to make do with the current vaccine – and experts last night stressed that they should carry on receiving it as it is the best defence available. Some 70 per cent of pensioners, who are eligible for the jab on the NHS, have already had the current vaccine so far this winter. The new jab, called Fluad, is particularly effective against a strain which is especially dangerous to the elderly called H3N2, also known as Aussie flu.
Trials have shown the £9.79 vaccine triggers a 61 per cent bigger immune response to this strain in over-65s than other vaccines.
It is also more effective against the other common strain, H1N1, with a 40 per cent bigger immune response.
Fluad has been available in Europe since August 1997, but only received a UK licence in August after British regulators retested its safety.
In October the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises the Government, recommended it replace the existing vaccine for the elderly. The minutes of its meeting said of Fluad: ‘In a study undertaken in an elderly population ... [it] showed a highly significant effectiveness and relative effectiveness compared with [the current vaccine] which showed no effectiveness.’
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