A federal advisory panel is urging people age 65 and older to get two separate vaccines to protect against pneumonia and other infections starting this fall.
The recommendation, which is a major change of decades-old advice, is being urged by an advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Fox News reports.
The second vaccine, called Prevnar 13, is necessary because of limitations with the older shot, called Pneumovax 23, the panel said.
Both vaccines, which are usually administered once in older adults, are designed to protect against infections of the Streptococcus pneumoniae, but they work in different ways. Prevnar 13 has been used to vaccinate children since 2010 and has proven effective.
An estimated 900,000 Americans a year get pneumococcal pneumonia — a lung infection that causes fever, cough, and chest pain. Up to 7 percent of patients die from it, according to the CDC. It is typically treated with antibiotics, but some strains have developed resistance to those drugs.
Pneumococcal bacteria also can cause so-called invasive diseases, including bacteremia, a bloodstream infection, and meningitis, which affects the brain and spinal cord. The CDC estimated there were about 3,300 deaths in the U.S. from these two diseases in 2012.
The CDC is expected to formally adopt the advisory panel's recommendations in coming weeks.