Usual symptoms

• People with influenza may feel tired or lacking in energy (fatigue) and get a headache, a cough, chills, muscle aches (myalgia), a runny nose and sneezing.
   

Rare symptoms

• People with influenza sometimes get swollen airways (acute bronchitis), swelling in their voice box and windpipe that causes a bark-like cough (croup), ear infection that causes earache (otitis media) and infected lungs (pneumonia).
   

Very rare symptoms

• Very rarely, people with influenza can get swelling (inflammation) in their heart muscle (myocarditis), the lining of their heart (pericarditis) or their brain (encephalitis). They can also get swelling in their liver and brain (Reye’s syndrome).¹
• Very rarely, people can die from influenza. Each year in Australia, influenza is reported to cause an average of approximately 400 deaths.² Because this number is hard to calculate accurately, the true number is likely higher.

An influenza vaccine is the best way to protect your adolescent against influenza.

As well as protecting your adolescent from getting sick, an annual influenza vaccination helps protect the people around them. If you don’t catch influenza, you can’t spread influenza. This community protection is especially important for vulnerable people, like babies aged under 6 months, who can’t get the vaccine; older people (aged 65 years and over); and people with low immunity.

Influenza vaccines protect your adolescent against several types (strains) of influenza virus. The strains of influenza the vaccine protects against may change each year, depending on which strains are likely to be circulating.

It is recommended that all people aged 6 months and over get an influenza vaccine every year. 

In Australia, the best time to get an influenza vaccine is in April or May, before the flu season, which is usually June–September.³ They can be vaccinated later in the season, too.

Your adolescent can get an influenza vaccine either on its own or at the same time as their other age-specific vaccinations.

Even if your adolescent is mildly unwell on the day of their appointment (this means no fever and a temperature under 38.5°C), they can still receive the vaccine.⁴

The influenza vaccine protects against three or four types (or strains) of the influenza virus. It works by ‘training’ your adolescent’s immune system to recognise and get rid of the influenza virus. When their immune system detects the antigens in the vaccine, it produces proteins called antibodies. These antibodies are like soldiers that recognise and remember the influenza type. If your adolescent is ever exposed to the real influenza virus, their immune system will recognise it quickly and fight it off using the antibodies it created after vaccination.⁵

Your body usually starts producing antibodies around one or two weeks after you have the vaccine.

Overall, influenza vaccination is the most effective way to protect your adolescent against the virus; but the effectiveness of influenza vaccines can vary depending on which strains of the virus are present in the community.

Each year, the Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee follows the recommendations of the World Health Organization to decide which influenza strains should be included in the vaccine to provide the best protection.

It’s important for adolescents to get an influenza vaccine every year to ensure they are vaccinated against the strains of the virus that are likely to be circulating that season.  

Research has shown influenza vaccination can reduce a child or adolescent’s (aged 1–15 years) chance of catching influenza by 70–91%.⁶

No, there is no risk your adolescent will catch influenza, because the vaccine does not contain the live virus that causes the disease.

• It is common for people who have an influenza vaccine to experience swelling, redness and pain where the injection was given. This can last one or two days after receiving the vaccine.⁶
• Less than 15% of people who have an influenza vaccine get a fever, headache, tiredness or lack of energy (fatigue) or muscle aches (myalgia) that last one or two days.⁶

• About 0.0001% of people (1 out of every 1,000,000) who get an influenza vaccine have a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis).⁷ This reaction usually happens within 15 minutes of getting the vaccine and can be treated with an injection of adrenaline. People who have this reaction usually recover quickly and don’t experience any long-term effects.⁸
• Less than 0.0001% of people (1 out of every 1,000,000) who get an influenza vaccine get Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disorder where a person’s immune system damages their peripheral nerve cells.⁴ While many people recover fully, others may continue to experience persistent symptoms.^9,10

The most important thing you can do to protect your adolescent is ensure they get a seasonal influenza vaccine every year, because the types of influenza viruses circulating often change from year to year and protection from vaccination generally lasts less than 12 months.

You can read some answers to common questions here.

If you still have some questions about vaccinations for your adolescent, write them down and make an appointment with your nurse, your doctor or your health worker so you can ask them.