Why health experts recommend getting flu and COVID-19 vaccinations together

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• CDC guidelines for the 2024-25 flu season recommend influenza vaccination for everyone 6 months of age or older, with rare exceptions.
• The recommendations include two important updates: a return to the trivalent influenza vaccine and the administration of high-dose vaccines to adults undergoing organ transplantation.
• Infectious disease experts recommend getting your flu shot and up-to-date COVID-19 vaccination at the same time, ideally in late September or October.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2024-25 influenza season guidelines recommend annual influenza vaccinations for everyone aged 6 months or older, with rare exceptions.

of Recommendations There are two important updates:

• After more than a decade of quadrivalent preparations, this year's influenza vaccine Trivalent Vaccine A trivalent vaccine that does not contain influenza B/Yamagata components. This trivalent vaccine targets three influenza strains: two influenza A viruses (H1N1 and H3N2) and influenza B/Victoria virus. The B/Yamagata lineage has not been detected worldwide since March 2020 and may therefore have been eliminated.
• Influenza vaccination for adult solid organ transplant recipients aged 18–64 years Immunosuppressants These high-dose vaccines help boost the immune response in older adults.

Infectious disease experts say influenza vaccines and Latest COVID-19 Vaccines It is from late September to October.

This increases the likelihood that both vaccines will provide the most effective protection through the winter. William Schaffner, MDProfessor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Diseases in the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

Healthline spoke with Shaffner about his plans for the future. Flu season Explain why it is important to get vaccinated against respiratory diseases such as influenza and COVID-19.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.

Schaffner: Modern flu vaccines protect against four different strains of the flu virus: two influenza A strains and two influenza B strains. Although there is a dominant strain, we usually have a large number of strains circulating, so we always have that.

This year's flu vaccine will protect against three types, as one of the B types has disappeared from the world and is undetectable. Two years laterSo we no longer need to include it in the vaccine, and that's a good thing.

Schaffner: We all hope that the flu epidemic will be very mild, but predicting the severity of the next flu epidemic is very risky – it's much easier to look back after a flu epidemic is over and say how severe it was.

If we look at the Southern Hemisphere, where it gets winter during our summer, what happens there doesn't necessarily predict what happens here.

We've included in our flu vaccines the strains that were active in the Southern Hemisphere this summer, and at this point, there appears to be a very good match between what's in our flu vaccines and the strains that we expect to be dominant going forward.

Schaffner: Yes, you should get both shots, whether in the same arm or opposite arms, because the flu vaccine does not prevent COVID-19 and the COVID vaccine does not prevent the flu.

The recommendations for both vaccines are the same (6 months and older) Both of these vaccines are very important and apply to everyone who is eligible.

Schaffner: I worry about that all the time, because habituation breeds, if not contempt, a certain indifference, and so we have come to accept and live with annual influenza virus epidemics.

Those of us in infectious disease and public health take influenza very seriously because we know that this nasty family of viruses can strike otherwise healthy young people and send them to hospital emergency rooms — within 48 hours every year, in every major hospital in the country.

Yes, most cases of flu in children are mild and easily cured, but sometimes, a normally healthy child can become seriously ill.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) agree 100% with the CDC that children should be vaccinated, and that this also applies to adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults.

Schaffner: Getting a flu shot is the most comfortable and reassuring thing you can do to protect yourself from serious illness, but it also protects your family and community.

The elderly, infirm and those with chronic illnesses, Immunodeficiency They are at highest risk of becoming seriously ill from the flu.

The flu vaccine is the most effective at preventing severe illness and also reduces transmission, so getting the flu vaccine also provides some protection to those around you.

The best way to protect immunocompromised people, who don't respond well to vaccines because their immune systems don't work as well, is to protect everyone around them, providing a kind of cocoon of protection for the most vulnerable in our communities.

CDC's recommendations for the 2024-25 influenza season include two important updates: reinstating the trivalent influenza vaccine and providing high-dose vaccine to adults receiving organ transplants.

To protect themselves over the winter, everyone aged six months and over should get their flu and COVID vaccinations at the same time, ideally by the end of October.

Getting vaccinated against influenza and COVID-19 can help prevent severe illness, even in young, healthy people.

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