Covid-19 isn’t the only virus we have to worry about these days. We are a few weeks away from the start of flu season.
“It’s going to be worse than last year, but we didn’t have any flu last year,” Dr. Ulysses Wu said.
Wu, an infectious disease specialist at Hartford HealthCare, said universal masking and social distancing helped keep the flu at bay last year.
“Definitely need to get the flu vaccine because masking and social distancing are not perfect either,” Wu said.
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“Within our four towns we had one case of flu last year. Where normally we see into the hundreds of cases,” Charles Brown, director of the Central Connecticut Health District, said.
The Central Connecticut Health District covers the towns of Berlin, Newington, Rocky Hill and Wethersfield.
“Because people have been vaccinated they’re not wearing their mask as much, they’re intermingling a little bit more, that’s all going to give opportunities for a variety of respiratory viruses to spread,” Brown said.
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Both Wu and Brown said flu season will likely be worse this year and that’s why they want to make sure everyone is vaccinated.
“The COVID vaccine will definitely not protect you against the flu,” Wu said.
“You definitely still need two vaccines, long story short,” he said.
Brown said they will start hosting drive-thru flu clinics in October.
“The more people that we get vaccinated the less opportunity that virus has to spread from one person who is not vaccinated to another,” Brown said.
There’s a concern that flu cases and the delta variant will increase hospitalizations.
“We need to do everything that we can to keep that twindemic from happening,” Brown said.
