“I like to say that every vaccine you get is like making a deposit in your immune system’s savings account,” said Dr. Payal Kohli, who is ABC10’s medical expert.
CALIFORNIA, USA — As California approaches the winter months, the possibility of getting COVID-19 and the flu increases as more people head inside.
Local medical experts are looking at the data and say they expect the flu season to be arriving earlier.
“As the weather starts to cool down, we know that respiratory viruses like the flu virus, COVID-19, and even other viruses like RSV can spread more efficiently. We also know that people start to gather indoors,” said Dr. Payal Kohli, ABC10’s medical expert.
Dr. Kohli says people can be naïve when it comes to the flu season because of previous mask-wearing and other preventions. However, medical experts expect the season to be here earlier and stronger.
“Part of that is because of what we normally see in Australia during their influenza season, which is our summer. That’s their winter and they saw this past year, they saw a three times higher rate of influenza than normal. The worst influenza season in five years,” said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Health.
They predict this is also what’ll happen here, and the truth is you could contract both COVID and the flu at the same time.
“The two biggest concerns when it comes to the flu and COVID season sorta overlapping with each other, one is accurate diagnoses. So, are we really going to be able to distinguish one from the other? Because their treatments are very different. The second is obviously prevention,” said Dr. Kohli.
The goal is to prevent both from happening, so they say now is the time to get both vaccines, which can be taken at the same time.
“Now’s a really good time also to get the new updated Bivalent boosters, the COVID shots, because we do expect an increase in transmission rates within the next few weeks and it does take about two weeks for us to get a good immune response to these booster shots,” said Dr. Blumberg.
Dr. Kohli says the flu vaccine doesn’t just prevent the flu, but according to data, it can also reduce your chance of having a heart attack.
“I like to say that every vaccine you get is like making a deposit in your immune system’s savings account, because it doesn’t just protect you against that particular infection. It kind of flexes your immune system’s muscle and even protects you against other respiratory infections as well,” said Dr. Kohli.
If you have symptoms of a cold, medical experts say there is a triple screen available right now that can test for all three viruses from a single swab.
