There has been a lot in the news recently about the FluMist, or LAIV vaccine, being ineffective in this past flu season.

In fact, the CDC found the nasal vaccine to be only 3 percent effective in children in the 2- to 17-year-old age range. This contradicts the recommendations in the previous flu season that the FluMist appeared to be more effective in that same age range. The newest recommendation now is that all children receive the injectable flu vaccine, or IIV, next year as it showed at least a 63 percent effectiveness in the last flu season.

So what’s going on?

It’s really unclear why FluMist didn’t perform as well as in past years. But to understand why even the injectable flu vaccine is not as highly effective as most other vaccines (most have at least a 95 percent effectiveness rate after the full series is given), one must understand that the flu strains change from year to year – and sometimes mid-season – so scientific analysis of flu data helps scientists decide which flu strains should go into each year’s vaccine.

Still, figuring out what flu strains will be out there can feel like trying to catch a hummingbird.

In the 2014-2015 season, the efficacy of all flu vaccines was only 40 percent, thereby leading to a worse flu season for patients. More research needs to be done to find out exactly what the problem was.

As to other viral vaccines, they are still as effective as ever.

Efficacy for those vaccines is 70 to 98 percent if you receive the full series. While some vaccines, such as the MMR, are more effective than others, the rate of all vaccine-preventable diseases has fallen by 90 to 100 percent since vaccines were first introduced.

A little background on what those vaccines are and the different types is in order.

MMR, varicella (chickenpox), oral polio vaccine, FluMist and oral rotavirus vaccine all belong to a class known as “live attenuated viral vaccines.” This means that a small amount of weakened virus is injected or orally ingested by the patient. That leads to the body mounting an immune response to the antigen (weakened virus) as though the body had been infected.

Because the virus is weakened, the patient doesn’t get ill from the virus unless they are in an immunocompromised state. That means that if your immune system is weakened by a disease, cancer or chemotherapy, you could catch the disease from the weakened virus but those with healthy immune systems won’t.

The next type of viral vaccine is found with hepatitis A, hepatitis B and the injectable polio virus. These are killed viral vaccines so there is no living/active substance involved but instead the killed virus acts as the antigen. The body still senses the killed antigen as something it should mount an immune response to and causes antibodies to be formed, and we are again protected from the disease.

These vaccines can usually be given to people who are immunocompromised without causing them to come down with the disease.

The above viral vaccines are more effective because the viruses don’t change from year to year, and there really isn’t any mutation of those common viruses so the vaccines are very effective.

The other vaccines that children receive target bacterial infections. Again, they are highly efficacious.

The bottom line is that it is still important to get immunized for the flu. This year, it will be the shot not the mist that pediatricians will be using.

I’m sure my colleagues in family practice, internal medicine and geriatrics will be using the injectable flu, too.

So while the flu vaccine never gets to the 95 percent protection level of the other viral vaccines, it still reduces the risk of getting the flu by around 40 to 60 percent and prevents people from getting seriously ill from the flu by giving at least partial immunity.

The flu vaccine will be available in September, and the doctors in our community and at Concord Pediatrics still highly recommend getting your shot. In fact, all our pediatricians here at Concord Pediatrics vaccinate their own children against the flu and all other vaccine-preventable illnesses every year.

(Dr. Patricia Edwards of Bow is a pediatrician and president of Concord Pediatrics in Concord.)