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Health officials are recommending flu shots for more people this flu season than in years past, but as flu season officially began this past week, state and local officials were confident there’s enough vaccine to go around.

“There should be plenty of flu vaccine this year,” said Connie Lawson, a spokeswoman for the Guilford County Department of Public Health.

The nation experienced a shortage of flu vaccine during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 flu seasons.

Flu is a viral infection that causes fever, cold symptoms and body aches. Flu and its complications kill about 36,000 Americans annually and hospitalize more than 200,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC recommends that certain groups be vaccinated because they are at higher risk of severe complications. The big change this year is that children from 6 to 18 are included in the CDC’s recommendations for the first time.

That’s because that age group has higher rates of flu than others — and, research is showing, is more likely than other groups to spread it, The Associated Press reported.

Others for whom the CDC recommends vaccine:

• Children 6 months and older.
• Pregnant women.
• People 50 and older.
• People of any age with certain chronic medical conditions.
• People in nursing homes or other long-term care centers.
• People who care for people with high risk of flu complications.
• People who care for infants younger than 6 months old. Those infants cannot be vaccinated.
• Health care workers.

As this flu season begins, the state Department of Health and Human Services has received almost 575,000 doses of vaccine, spokeswoman Amy Caruso said. Some health care providers get their vaccine from private distributors or manufacturers, not the state.

At the local level, the Guilford health department has scheduled its flu-season planning for next week, Lawson said.

The department already has received vaccine, she said, and soon will announce when it will be ready for people to make appointments for flu shots.

The department has scheduled flu-shot clinics on Election Day at eight polling places in the county as part of the nationwide Vote and Vax program.

Each year, state officials track the incidence of flu, or flulike illness, through a network of hospitals, public clinics and private health care centers.

For tracking purposes, flu or flulike illness is defined as having a temperature of 100 degrees or higher, along with cough or sore throat.

This year’s tracking started Sunday; tracking typically extends into May. Network members also report what types of flu viruses they are finding, state spokesman Zack Moore said. The state also receives real-time reports of flulike illness from all the state’s hospital emergency departments, Moore said.

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com