Tips to protect yourself in a flu and COVID ‘twindemic’

Health officials are urging people to get vaccinated for the flu, fearing COVID-19 and flu cases could become a “twindemic” that would overburden the nation’s health care and testing system.

The flu is a serious virus in its own right: Up to 56 million people contracted the flu last year, with hundreds of thousands hospitalized and an estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths, including 188 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC recommends that people aged 6 months or older receive flu vaccinations by late October at the beginning of the season before the virus starts spreading, although getting a vaccination later can still be beneficial.

Here, David Cennimo, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, discusses this year’s flu season, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and what you need to do to protect yourself:

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