This article appeared on SFGate. Read more here.
COVID-19 isn’t the only virus spreading rapidly this holiday season. After a quiet flu season last year, influenza is now on the rise in California, and the state is in the “very high” category for virus transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Amid the surge, you may be wondering if it’s too late to get a flu shot.
“The short answer is absolutely not,” Dr. Dean Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford and an infectious disease expert, told SFGATE on the phone. “It takes about 10 to 14 days to form antibodies in response to any type of a vaccine, and the flu shot is consistent with that. We’re still more than 10 days away from Christmas. A lot of us are going to get together with our family and friends, and it’s really a perfect time to get vaccinated.”
What’s more, flu season hasn’t reached its peak yet this year — and it usually doesn’t hit its height until January or February, added Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s like the rain is starting to fall, but it’s drizzling, so you can still repair the roof,” Chin-Hong told SFGATE on the phone.
What if you already had the flu? You should still get the shot, experts said.
“There are four strains of flu included in this vaccine,” Chin-Hong said. “Different strains circulate through the season, so if you had the flu early in this season, you will have more protection if you get the vaccine now.”
The predominant strain right now is H3N2, but this could shift in coming weeks, days and months, and it’s unknown what will happen this year. While last year’s flu season was marked by a lower number of cases than normal, Chin-Hong said the virus lingered into summer.
The flu vaccine is updated every year and generally reduces the number of people who get sick by anywhere from 40% to 60%, according to the CDC. A study conducted in Chile found that this year’s vaccine reduced the risk of hospitalizations by 49% — and Chin-Hong said an efficacy rate at that level could prevent tens of thousands of hospitalizations in the U.S. Since it’s located in the southern hemisphere, Chile experiences its winter before the United States.
Despite the effectiveness of this year’s shot, vaccination rates are down from previous years in certain populations. Flu vaccines are down about 10 percentage points for pregnant people compared with last year and down 20 percentage points compared with where they were before the pandemic, the CDC said. Vaccine coverage for children ages 6 months to 17 years is similar to that of last year but 4.2 percentage points lower than it was pre-pandemic.
Low vaccination rates may be one reason this year’s season is surging. Experts say loosened pandemic-related restrictions are another factor, as well as the lack of exposure to the flu during COVID, which may have impacted immunity, SFGATE reported previously.
The shot can both prevent illness and reduce symptoms if you do get sick, according to the CDC. The vaccine is approved for people 6 months and older. The CDC estimated in its Dec. 9 report that so far this season, 13 million people have been sick with the flu, 120,000 have been hospitalized, and 7,300 have died.