Soon annual influenza vaccines will be available for the season. Washington County Public Health Nurse Erin James recommends people get the shot each year. She says that with COVID-19 still circulating, reducing your risk of illness by getting a flu shot can help the system as a whole, “It’s never 100% effective, we understand that. It is the frontline defense, though. Even if you do get influenza, it will lower your symptoms, it will decrease the time that you’re sick. So, I mean, that’s always the first line of defense against influenza and that hasn’t changed. And especially with COVID, we don’t want to tax our healthcare system that’s kind of always been the agenda with COVID even. And when the flu kind of interferes with that or comes along with that, we don’t, again I’m going to use the word ‘unprecedented,’ because we don’t know what that’s going to look like in the fall. We don’t know how that’s going to work with COVID or work against it. And so, I would strongly encourage anybody that’s able to, that’s old enough to, to get your flu vaccine because again the flu vaccine is not just for you, it’s for all of the little babies and all of the immune-compromised people who are unable to actually get vaccinated.”

The Centers for Disease Control estimates 16,520,350 medical visits and 490,561 hospitalizations happened in the 2018-2019 flu season due to influenza-associated illness. From November 2019 to this August, there were 103 influenza-associated deaths in Iowa, including two children.

James says public health’s first shipment of the vaccine is set to arrive next week.