- There is concern the coming months
could create a twindemic.
- COVID is continuing to surge unfortunately.
Doctors are now warning the flu
will also be a major threat
over the next few months.
- When flu does come back, and it will come back,
it's gonna come back very aggressively.
- [Narrator] Health experts are warning
that this year's flu season could be much worse
than last year's.
The CDC says from 9 million to 45 million people
in the US get infected with the flu annually leading
to 12,000 to 61,000 deaths.
But that wasn't the case last year.
Last year's flu season was nearly nonexistent.
Public health and clinical laboratories reported
only a few thousand cases of the flu for the season.
The COVID pandemic is a big reason
why those numbers were so low.
WSJ reporter, Felicia Schwartz,
has been reporting on the upcoming flu season.
- All of the experts and virologists
that I spoke to in the course
of reporting all of this out said
that there will definitely be more flu than last year
and it could potentially be an earlier
and more severe season just as a result
of the weird dynamics last year.
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- [Narrator] The flu virus can spread to other people
through exposure, mainly from droplets made
when people who have the flu cough, sneeze or talk.
Less often, a person might get the flu
from contact with surfaces that have flu virus on it.
And since the start of the pandemic,
health experts have found COVID spreads
in much the same way.
During last year's flu season
with the roll out of COVID vaccines just getting started,
much of the US was in lockdown.
Social distancing guidelines were in effect
and many people were masked.
All things that help prevent the spread of COVID
and also help prevent the flu.
Now COVID vaccines are widely available
and people are interacting more.
- People are back at school, back at work to some extent.
Depending on where you live in the US,
there are or aren't social distancing restrictions,
like mask wearing and congregating
in large groups and so on.
And so there is a lot more opportunity for the flu
to spread this year.
- [Narrator] As a population,
there's also less immunity to the flu this year.
Population immunity occurs
when people are naturally infected by the virus
or have received a vaccine.
Since so few people were infected with the flu last year
because of social distancing,
people haven't been able to build up
their natural immune defenses.
This lack of immunity could contribute
to what some health experts are calling a twindemic.
It refers to the threat of a severe flu outbreak
on top of the COVID-19 pandemic,
which could be detrimental to the healthcare system.
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- And I think the fear from health authorities
is that hospitals could be further overwhelmed.
One hospital administrator was telling me
maybe they'd have to cut back on clinic hours
or reschedule other procedures
if they've having to make these kinds of choices.
They might have to scale some things back.
- [Narrator] This overlap could also cause confusion
among people above whether they have COVID-19
or the flu.
Because they have similar symptoms,
it could be hard to diagnose which condition people have
based on the symptoms alone.
The main difference between the two
is that COVID symptoms typically appear
about five days after infection
but symptoms can appear 2 to 14 days after infection.
And flu symptoms usually appear
about one to four days after infection.
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The good news is the best ways
to prevent catching the flu
are the ones many people are already familiar with.
- Infectious disease experts
and epidemiologists really urge you
to get a flu shot.
On top of that, hand washing, good hygiene.
If you're already wearing masks
and practicing social distancing for corona,
that definitely can't hurt you
if you're looking to avoid catching the flu.
- [Narrator] The flu season commonly strikes the US October
through May with cases peaking in December through February.
So the CDC recommends getting a flu shot every year
by the end of October to get ahead of it.
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The CDC says you can get both the flu shot
and the COVID vaccine,
including boosters at the same time,
which wasn't the guidance last year.
- The shots were so new,
they didn't really have enough information
to make their recommendation
but now they're saying yes, you can go get those two shots
at the same time.
So depending also on the booster campaign,
maybe there'll be some more co-administration of shots.
- [Narrator] As far as side effects
from taking both the COVID vaccine and the flu shot
at the same time,
the CDC says the side effects people experience
are similar to what they experience
when the vaccines are given separately.
Some pharmaceutical companies
are even working on a combined flu shot
and COVID vaccine that could be administered
in the same jab.
But there's no clear timeline yet
on when those would be available.
While experts believe this flu season
could strike earlier and more severely than usual,
there's still no guarantee it will be.
- One person I interviewed described it to me
as a tricky devil.
It's very hard to predict.
So I think there's a general feeling
that it will be worse,
and some people think it could be very bad
but it's kind of hard to know at this point.
If you're worried about the flu,
probably the single best thing you could do
is go out and take a shot.
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