It’s time to start thinking about scheduling your yearly flu shot. The vaccine can help protect you from flu viruses that circulate in the winter months. Ethan Leif, MD is a family medicine physician, and he shares some tips to reduce your risk of illness.
When is it recommended to get a flu shot?
The ideal time would be between September and October, that’s kind of the sweet spot, but honestly any time outside of that would be OK, too, just because the flu season can end up going into the spring.
Do you need one every year?
Just because we are covering different strains each year and the flu can have different strains each year, so we would recommend getting it every single year.
Who should get a flu shot?
Especially older adults, young kids, people with chronic illnesses like asthma, diabetes, heart disease, someone who is immunocompromised. And those individuals who work in health care or take care of one of those individuals in a high-risk population.
What if you’ve already been sick this flu season?
There’s lots of things that can cause illnesses, we may or may not know if it was the flu previously and like I said, different strains of the flu happen each season, so we can protect you against the different strains by still getting a flu shot.
Tips you can use to help keep illness at bay.
Staying home if you are sick so we are not spreading any type of illness to the people we come in contact with, and then other than that, it’s just the basic stuff that we hear all the time, washing our hands, not touching our face, covering our coughs and sneezes, and then using a disinfectant to wipe off shared surfaces.
Learn more about protecting yourself and your family with vaccines.
