Somebody is wrong when it comes to the effectiveness of nasal spray flu vaccine for children. The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta is telling U.S. doctors the spray is only “three per cent effective” in the annual defense against flu. That is said to compare with 63 percent effectiveness, on average, for the old-fashioned injection. But here in Ontario, Health Minister Eric Hoskins says the province will continue to offer the spray, pointing to a study by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research that found flu mist “as effective as the injectable version.” All of this is separate from the annual guessing game required by scientists to foresee just what strains of flu are going show up as influenza hits each fall. CBC
