Vaccination against flu falls in the range of 60 to 64

The coverage of the flu vaccination at the national level it has descended this season in almost all target groups, highlighting the 60 to 64 age groupwhere protection has fallen to 31.6 percent compared to the 35.3 percent registered in 2024-25, according to data provided by the Sanofi Gripometer 2025-2026.

The document reveals that the 2025-2026 season is confirmed as atypical, due to the early peak of infections and the predominance of a more mutable variant.

According to the Gripometer, both over 60 years old how people with chronic pathologies show a general decline. Among those over 60 years of age, coverage stagnates at 55.4 percent (compared to 55.7 percent in 2024-25), in a context of strong territorial differences. More than 25 points separate the most protected communities, such as Galicia (73.5%) and Castilla y León (70.5%), from those with lower levels, such as the Canary Islands (48.1%) and the Balearic Islands (49%).

In children under 5 years of age, vaccination continues to advance and becomes the segment with the highest growth, reaching 49.8 percent, which is 6.2 points more compared to 2024-2025. The analysis reflects that, in those settings such as pediatrics, where the recommendation is systematic, coverage increases consistently, while the lack of consistent messages in adult risk groups causes vaccination to suffer.

“Going from 22.4 percent to 20.6 percent in chronic patients means that 80 out of 100 are not vaccinatedwhen we should see an increasing trend. In people aged 60 to 64, the decrease from 35.3 percent to 31.7 percent takes us even further away from the goal of 75 percent. These data are especially significant in a year in which the flu has had great media visibility,” said the president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology, Jaime Jesús Pérez.

In this sense, the Gripometer detects that a strong increasingly widespread phenomenon among people over 60 years old or more who are in good health: 55.6 percent of those who do not get vaccinated believe they do not need it, despite being part of the group most susceptible to serious complications. From this age onwards, an inevitable physiological process begins, immunosenescence, characterized by the progressive deterioration of the immune system, which reduces the ability to respond to external threats such as influenza, even in the absence of previous pathologies.

“In people over 60 years of age, the flu vaccine not only prevents the flu: prevents heart attacks, cardiovascular diseases, pneumonia and all the associated complications. The message is simple: if you want a healthy life, incorporate flu vaccination as one of its fundamental parts,” Pérez explained.

33% of chronic patients would be vaccinated if they knew the risks of the flu

According to experts, the lack of risk perception in groups with medical conditions remains a key obstacle to vaccination. In this group, a significant portion is unaware of how the flu can aggravate their health. Almost 2 out of every 3 people with cardiovascular diseases (64.7%) ignore the real danger that infection poses to their pathology.

This lack of information directly affects their decision, since 1 in 3 chronic patients (34.1%) states that they would change their decision not to get vaccinated if they knew better the consequences of the flu for their pathology.

Likewise, the health recommendation is the factor that most influences the decision to get vaccinated: a third of the people who decide to get vaccinated (32.1%) do so for direct advice from your professional. However, the Gripometer shows a marked decrease in prescriptions. 58 percent of people over 60 years of age say they do not feel sufficiently informedand 13.5 percent of chronic patients stopped getting vaccinated this year because they did not receive a reminder.

On the other hand, COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Spain also falls. Specifically, it drops 5 points compared to 2024, and opens a gap of 21.6 points below the flu vaccine. It stands at 33.8 percent for those over 60 years of age.

“The loss of flu-COVID co-administration is leaving risk groups more vulnerable, but there is a paradox: the joint vaccination experience is valued positively by 57 percent,” Sanofi points out.