Early research suggests the flu vaccine could be a weapon in the fight against COVID-19

• A new study suggests a promising effect of this year's flu vaccine, relative to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
  
• The study hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, but it suggests that people who get the flu vaccine may see their chance of being infected by COVID-19 lowered at least to some degree.
• More research is needed, however, because this connection could be due to the fact that people who get the flu vaccine could be more health-conscious in general, which could explain why they're less likely to engage in behavior that exposes them to COVID-19.
  

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Getting your annual flu vaccine is an important part of staying healthy, but it may be even more so this year with the onset of a so-called winter "twindemic." This is the period when the ordinary flu season will also feature a worsening coronavirus outbreak around the US, potentially overwhelming health care systems in many communities. Indeed, my home city of Memphis is preparing to finally tap the surge capacity hospital facility that it stood up early on in the pandemic, on account of the worsening COVID-19 numbers here. It's part of the hard COVID-19 winter that the US is in store for, which White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said Americans need to "hunker down" because of.

Meantime, the results of a new study have been released that contain a promising finding: It seems that a flu vaccine may help trigger the kind of infection defense within the body that can also help a person better ward off the coronavirus pathogen.

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Early research suggests the flu vaccine could be a weapon in the fight against COVID-19 originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 28 Oct 2020 at 18:38:07 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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