Getting the flu shot this year is even more of the same because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to public fitness officials.
“We want to drive mass adoption of the vaccine this year,” said John Brownstein, who tracks outbreaks around the world as director of innovation at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Everyone who is eligible gets it.”
Producers are expanding their flu vaccine materials this year to meet what they expect to be the top demand. CVS outlets already have the flu vaccine in stock and vaccines will be available from Monday at Walgreens.
Vaccine manufacturer Sanofi plans to hold a press convention Monday morning at which he will report that he will produce 15% more vaccines than in a year.
“Influenza vaccines work and can lighten our medical infrastructure,” John Shiver, the company’s global director of vaccine studies and development, said last week. “Let other people not enter the hospital while we face a very likely increase in COVID infections.
The flu vaccine isn’t effective, but it’s much bigger than anything, said Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease specialist and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone older than six months or more is vaccinated one year. The firm did not respond to a request for comment on this year’s situation.
The CDC recommends that others get vaccinated against the flu until the end of October, as the vaccine takes a few weeks to become fully protective, but it also encourages others to get vaccinated later than anything.
It’s hard to know how the flu will interact with COVID-19. Flu season has been mild in the southern hemisphere, six months earlier than in the United States, but it’s not transparent if it’s because of the flu strains circulating this year or the same public fitness measures that save you COVID. Masks, social remoteness and common hand washing also prevent flu epidemics.
So far, few other people have contracted influenza at the same time as COVID-19. People with either appear to have mild to moderate symptoms, at least two deaths have been reported.
“What co-infection will mean is a big concern,” Brownstein said. Considerable is underway lately.
In 2018-2019, there were approximately 490,000 other people hospitalized due to the flu and more than 35,000 died, in what was considered a “moderate” year for influenza. Since March, more than 345,000 Americans have been hospitalized and 170,000 have died from COVID-19.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent verbal exchange with Cardiology Magazine that it’s hard to hope for what flu season will be like.
“The worst case scenario is that we have a very active flu season that encompasses COVID-19 respiratory infection,” he said. “The worst-case scenario, because it would complicate things from the point of view of diagnosis, from the point of view of healing and from the point of view of putting a lot of pressure on the fitness system.”
There are at least 3 reasons to get vaccinated against the flu this year, Doron said: for you, for others, and to fear.
If the COVID-19 outbreak continues the flu season, it will be very difficult to distinguish between the two, he said, “because they look the same.”
Anyone who arrives at the hospital with flu-like symptoms will be treated as a COVID-19 patient. “People tend not to manipulate you” if they think you have COVID-19, he said, so a flu patient can be denied visits and treated remotely, at least initially, he said.
In addition, hospitals are already at risk of being hit by coVID-19 patients. Adding flu patients to the most sensitive will endanger everyone’s health, Doron said. “If we don’t have beds or fans, I wish you didn’t have the flu,” he said.
Dr. Steven Abelowitz, medical director of Coastal Kids, a pediatric practice of five practices in Southern California, added another concern: bringing students back to school. Reducing flu cases makes it less difficult to reopen schools and keep them open, he said.
Most parents in their workplace have been open to the concept of vaccinating their children, he said, although about 20-30% of their patients are still behind in their vaccines due to closures this spring and avoidance of medical practices by the pandemic.
His practice has made it a point of honor to identify young people who are behind and touch their families with emails, text messages and calls, Abelowitz said.
But he is involved if young people stay with their vaccines, when the pandemic recoils and others resume more activities, it will give other viruses and bacteria the chance to settle down.
Getting the flu shot can be something else this year, as some clinics move and closed workplaces provide vaccines.
But Doron said getting a flu shot at a local pharmacy is as smart as anywhere else.
“Wherever the lines are shorter and the first one that has them is the position to get them,” he said.
Anyone who is vaccinated at Walgreens will have to be masked and tested for fever, and pharmacists will wear face protectors and masks, the pharmacy chain announced Monday.
While many hospitals make the flu vaccine a condition of employment, Tufts has not yet done so for a diagnosed allergy, Doron said. But 97% of workers have been vaccinated in recent years.
There is a theoretical possibility that getting the flu vaccine while you are recently inflamed with COVID-19 may worsen the infection, but no one has noticed this reaction, Sanofi’s Shiver said.
And this theoretical threat “is not a smart explanation for why you get a flu shot,” Shiver said. It’s equally credible that strengthening the immune formula with a flu vaccine is helping someone who’s been fighting COVID-19 lately, he said.
“Efforts to involve COVID-19 are expected to minimize influenza this year,” Doron said.
“I would absolutely expect what we would do with the estrangement, dressed in mask and hand hygiene and some final business: it reduced COVID in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and there is no explanation why it might not have the same effect on the flu,” he said, adding that the flu had disappeared before the same age at the close in March.
But Brownstein, of Boston Children’s, said other people use this as an excuse not to get a flu shot.
“We can’t depend on that, ” he said.
Nathan Bomey contributed to this story.
Contact Weintraub at kweintraub – usatoday.
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