A panel of federal vaccine advisers recommended Wednesday that all children aged from six months up to 18 should receive annual flu shots. The current recommendation is that children 6 months to 5 years of age are vaccinated.

The recommendation coming from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices would cover an additional 30 million children.

“There are about 59 million (children aged 5 to 18) but a lot of those children are lready covered under current recommendation,” CDC representative Curtis Allen said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

The committee urged that the recommendation be adopted for next winter’s flu season. However, most physicians had already ordered their vaccine supplies for next year, they noted. Therefore, it is unlikely the program will be fully implemented until the following year.

Reports indicate that each year, an estimated 2 percent to 20 percent of the U.S. population suffers from the flu. Approximately 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications and more than 36,000 people die from influenza, which is especially dangerous for those who are young, old, or have weakened immune system, according to the CDC.

The CDC reported last Friday that 22 pediatric deaths had been registered. Moreover, the influenza is active in all 50 states now. Last year, 68 children died of flu in 26 states during a very mild influenza season: 39 of them were aged 5 to 17 and more than 90 percent of all the children who died had not been vaccinated.

On the other hand, it’s no longer a secret that this year’s flu vaccine has not been able to cover all the strains of the viruses that had been circulating throughout the United States. Moreover, some of the strains have become immune to antiviral medication: “two of the three common circulating types or subtypes [of viruses] are not as well-covered by the vaccine as an ideal match this year,” Dr. Joe Bresee, chief of the branch of epidemiology and prevention at CDC warned on February 16.

 That’s why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials met the CDC officials last week and greed to change next year’s flu vaccine mix. They announced the selection of a new Type A strain known as H1N1-Brisbane/59; A-Brisbane/10, a version of the H3N2 flu; and a newer Type B-Florida for the 2008-2009 flu season.

However, “influenza viruses are changing all the time.” Therefore, health officials cannot be sure if this year’s selection will match the next year’s type of influenza virus. “We're trying to have a window which allows us enough time to manufacture a vaccine. We can't just turn on a dime," said Dr. Norman Baylor, FDA's chief of vaccine review.

The virus strain most common in the U.S. this year is the influenza A H3N2 strain and it’s a strain not included in this year’s vaccine. Moreover, this year’s vaccine is not well matched against influenza type B.

Almost 8.1 percent of the influenza type A viruses tested by the CDC were resistant to Tamiflu (the antiviral drug made by Roche AG and Gilead Sciences), while less than 1 percent of the viruses have been resistant to the drug in past years.

Five companies now make flu vaccine for the U.S. market -- Sanofi Pasteur, Australia's CSL Ltd, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Novartis AG and nasal spray maker MedImmune, recently acquired by AstraZeneca Plc.