Are you able to get the flu after receiving a flu shot?

“It’s sort of trigger for alarm,” Dr. Megan Berman, affiliate professor of inner drugs on the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences on the College of Texas Medical Department Well being, tells Fortune. 

Specialists say a flu shot is your greatest protection in opposition to the virus, however some persons are opting to skip the vaccine, lamenting that they’ll get the an infection anyway. 

So are you able to get the flu after receiving the shot? 

You’ll be able to nonetheless get the flu, however it will not be as extreme

The flu vaccine normally reduces the danger of getting sick with the flu annually by between 40% and 60%, relying on the pressure that circulates and the way nicely the vaccine matches that pressure. 

Whereas the vaccine can’t assure you gained’t get sick, it helps shield in opposition to extreme sickness that may result in hospitalization and demise, just like the COVID shot. Information discovered this 12 months’s flu shot reduces hospitalization danger by practically 50%, per the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC). Folks with continual circumstances, like lung or coronary heart illness, are at the next danger of getting severely sick from the flu, so the vaccine is essential in stopping hospitalization on this group. 

“Once we discuss extreme illness, we’re speaking about individuals getting within the hospital, exacerbating underlying continual sickness, or dying from an infection,” Berman says. 

Within the 2019–2020 flu season, the CDC estimates, the vaccine prevented 7.5 million flu circumstances, over 100,000 hospitalizations, and over 6,000 deaths. 

You may get the flu earlier than antibodies kick in

It takes two weeks for the physique to generate an immune response after the jab. For those who get the flu inside that two-week window post-vaccine, it’s probably as a result of your physique hasn’t guarded itself in opposition to the virus but. Additionally, you could have already had the flu once you obtained the vaccine. 

You might have one other virus with related signs

Flu and COVID share a number of signs, together with cough, sore throat, fever, chills, and extra. If in case you have flu-like signs and also you’ve been vaccinated, it might be a distinct virus. Testing will give a transparent reply, Berman says. She generally sees sufferers who assume they’d both COVID or the flu primarily based on their signs however seldom have proof. She all the time tells them that it’s higher to get examined as a substitute of assuming a selected virus triggered the signs—it could possibly lead many to assume they’re immune from an an infection they by no means had, she says. 

“Now we have the potential to check, and lots of people had been simply assuming they’ve one thing with out truly figuring out,” she says. “There are a variety of these viruses. They mimic each other.” 

There are additionally totally different remedies for COVID versus the flu (Paxlovid and Tamiflu respectively). 

You may not have as sturdy of an immune response

These 65 and older, who make up the majority of hospitalizations from the flu yearly, don’t have as sturdy an immune response to the flu vaccine as these youthful. The CDC recommends different vaccines for this inhabitants, some being higher-dose, in response to the CDC: Fluzone Excessive-Dose Quadrivalent vaccine, Flublok Quadrivalent recombinant flu vaccine and Fluad Quadrivalent adjuvanted flu vaccine. 

For individuals receiving immunosuppressive remedy, like for most cancers remedy, or for many who have an autoimmune dysfunction, immune response to the vaccine might also be much less efficient. For those who’re over 18, you may get the Flublok vaccine, which might work higher for this group. 

If the pharmacy doesn’t have the actual flu vaccine you’re searching for, get the overall vaccine that’s out there. 

“Any vaccine is healthier than no vaccine,” Berman says. 

The flu shot can’t provide the flu

Some fear whether or not the flu vaccine can truly provide the flu itself. Nonetheless, the vaccine is constructed from an inactivated or killed a part of the virus, so it’s not doable for the virus to copy and trigger sickness. 

Your physique might have unwanted effects proper after the shot like a fever, soreness, headache, nausea, or muscle aches, however it’s an indication of the physique creating an immune response. The unwanted effects subside inside just a few days. 

As individuals journey for the vacation season and collect indoors when it’s chilly, it’s really helpful to do your half and keep protected even when you’re not high-risk, Berman says. Some individuals might imagine they don’t want the flu shot, particularly as a result of it’s an annual vaccine. However equally to sporting a seat belt, getting the vaccine helps shield not simply your self however these round you from extreme outcomes. 

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