Flu season may face extra challenge in coronavirus era
Bad as it has been these past few months to live with the danger of coronavirus, things are about to get worse. Fall is approaching and with it comes that other respiratory virus that puts thousands of Americans in the hospital every year: influenza.
Prepare for an onslaught of public service messages begging you to get a shot not only to protect yourself and your vulnerable loved ones but an entire health system already strained by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hospitals often fill up in December and January when flu season really takes off, said Susan Bailey, an allergy and immunology specialist in Fort Worth, Texas, who is president of the American Medical Association. “If hospitals are already full of coronavirus patients, where are the influenza patients going to go?” she asked. The AMA encourages flu vaccines every year, but it will have a larger campaign with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ad Council this year. without testing. A new test that can detect influenza A, influenza B and COVID-19 has received emergency authorization from the FDA, but is not yet available. That means patients could need two tests to get a diagnosis.
Doctors need to know which one they’re dealing with because there are anti-viral medications for flu. More importantly, people with coronavirus need to be isolated.
Doctors know that patients can get the coronavirus and flu at the same time. They do not know yet whether that results in worse illness than either would cause alone, but it stands to reason that it might. Flu and the coronavirus tend to be most dangerous for the same groups: the elderly and those with chronic health problems. There isn’t a vaccine for coronavirus yet, they said, but you can do something about the flu.
“We want to make sure we take flu off the table,” said L.J. Tan, chief strategy officer for the Immunization Action Committee, a nonprofit that promotes vaccination.
National Foundation for Infectious Diseases
(NFID) and professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Telemedicine can’t deliver vaccines, he said, and rates for other types of vaccination have dropped.
“We’re very concerned about that,” he said. “There’s a need to get (the flu shot), but there are barriers to actually getting it done.”
The foundation is also stepping up vaccine promotion efforts, especially for people with chronic illness.
On the other hand, demand could be unusually high for what may feel like a rare and muchneeded act of control.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug manufacturers say they will produce 194 to 198 million doses of vaccine this season, up from 175 million last year.
Many of the government vaccines will go to county health departments, people on Medicaid and users of federal health centers.
While some doctors