Seasonal Flu Vaccination in Healthy Workforce

Update - 10 November 2011:
We now have a stock of flu vaccines available to us. Please contact us on the above telephone number for further details.

During an influenza outbreak:

• Some staff will continue to work whilst contagious which obviously increases the risk of infecting other staff and creating a workplace outbreak
• More than 150million working days are lost in UK each year at a cost of £6.75 billion (consumer health info centre)
• Staff will be absent putting pressure on the remaining staff
• Infection lasts about 7 days but a feeling of weakness persists for some time reducing productivity

The seasonal flu vaccination:

• Decreases the frequency of respiratory illness by 25%
• Decreases absenteeism from work due to respiratory illness by 43%
• Decreases absenteeism due to all illness by 36% when compared to healthy working adults who had received a placebo (NEJM 1995)

The financial benefits of seasonal influenza vaccination in a healthy workforce have been established by a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (1995, 333;889-93) which studied vaccination versus placebo. This study concluded that flu vaccination of a workforce was clearly cost-effective.

This factsheet has been compiled to allow employers to make an informed choice about vaccination of employees against seasonal influenza.