This story appeared in WCMU. Read more here.
Health officials are worried about a possible “twindemic,” making the crisis at hospitals even worse. A “twindemic” means two serious diseases infecting large numbers of people at the same time. In this case, that would be COVID-19, and the flu.
Doctor Natasha Bagdasarian is Michigan’s chief medical executive. She says the flu could still surge, so it’s not too late to get a flu shot.
“Even with a little bit of flu circulating and causing severe illness, our hospitals are already overwhelmed,” Bagdasarian said. “Last year people were using mitigation strategies. People were staying at home, they were masking, there were some schools that were remote all of those, and so because of all those mitigation strategies, we never really had a flu season.”
She says to make things worse, about 400-thousand fewer Michiganders got their flu shot this year compared to last year.
She says hospitals are already overwhelmed with COVID, so people need to get flu shots if they haven’t already, as well as their COVID vaccines.