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- A new study suggests a promising effect of this year’s flu vaccine, compared to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
- The study has not yet been peer reviewed, but it suggests that people who get the flu vaccine may see their chance of being infected with COVID-19 lowered at least to some degree.
- More research is needed, however, because this connection may be due to the fact that people receiving the flu vaccine may be more health conscious in general, which could explain why they are less likely to engage in behaviors that expose them to COVID. 19.
Getting the annual flu shot is an important part of staying healthy, but it could be even more so this year as the so-called winter “twindemia” begins. This is the period when the normal flu season will also present a worsening of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, potentially overwhelming for health systems in many communities. In fact, my hometown of Memphis is preparing to finally take advantage of the resilient hospital facility that withstood the start of the pandemic, due to the worsening COVID-19 numbers here. It’s part of the harsh COVID-19 winter that the United States is in store for, for which White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said Americans must “squat” for this reason.
Meanwhile, the results of a new study have been released that contain a promising discovery: It appears that a flu shot may help trigger the kind of defense against infections within the body that may also help a person better ward off the pathogen of the flu. coronavirus.
This first research was only published as a preprint and hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, so don’t take it for gospel just yet. The finding here is that receiving a flu vaccination appears to have reduced the chances among healthcare workers in the Netherlands of those workers who also contract COVID-19. Furthermore, this is not even the first study to suggest that some vaccines can strengthen the body’s defense against infections against other pathogens not specifically targeted by the vaccine.
The document explaining all this has been posted on the website medRxiv a few weeks ago by scientists from the Netherlands and Germany. As summarized by Scientific American, the paper’s researchers “detail two separate investigations into the theory that the flu vaccine used in the Netherlands last winter – an inactivated vaccine intended to protect against the four major strains of the flu virus in circulation – could reduce the risk of COVID. 19. “In many countries, including the United States, FOR he continues, this is the main type of flu vaccine used every year.
In this study, an infectious disease immunologist from Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands named Mihai Netea along with some of her colleagues went through their hospital’s database to find employees vaccinated against influenza during the 2019-2020 season. . They checked to see if those people ended up catching the virus behind COVID-19, and here’s what they found:
It was found that hospital workers who received a flu vaccine were 39% less likely to test positive for COVID-19 as of June 1, 2020. Only 2.23% of unvaccinated employees tested positive for the virus while only 1.33% of those vaccinated did.
Ellen Foxman, an immunobiologist and clinical pathologist at Yale School of Medicine, pointed out FOR that “This is an interesting study, but it doesn’t provide definitive evidence.” As noted, it has not yet been peer reviewed and there may be other reasons for these findings, such as the fact that people who received the flu shot may be more health conscious in general, which may explain why they did not. done. end up getting infected with COVID-19.
Andy is a reporter in Memphis who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he’s not writing about tech, he can be found protective leaning over his burgeoning vinyl collection, as well as nurturing his Whovianism and bingeing on a variety of TV shows you probably don’t like.
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