Take the seasonal flu vaccine every season, don’t ignore it, says expert

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‘Influenza has nothing to do with coronavirus’

KUWAIT CITY, Aug 5: Senior Specialist in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine Dr Wasil Al-Adsani stressed the need to take the seasonal flu vaccine every season and not only this year, highlighting its extreme importance, reports Al-Anba daily. In a special statement, Dr Al-Adsani said, “Influenza has nothing to do with the COVID-19 virus.

They are quite different and do not belong to the same family of viruses. Therefore, taking the flu vaccine is not effective in protecting from COVID-19. However, it protects from influenza infections. Influenza is a virus that at some stage of life can become fatal for some people with weakened immunity.

Also, the person who suffers from flu is more likely to get infected with COVID-19, especially if his immune system is weak. If a person contracts both the flu and COVID-19 infection, he is regarded to suffer from two diseases at a time. Such a situation is extremely dangerous, especially for people with high risk such as the elderly or people suffering from chronic diseases. In such cases, it is better to take the flu vaccine so that the risk is not doubled”.

Regarding the production of a vaccine against COVID-19, Dr Al-Adsani said, “Globally, there are four advanced companies working on producing the vaccine. They are Pfizer Company in the USA, another American company that is doing so in cooperation with the Oxford University, a vaccine produced by China, and Johnson & Johnson Company.

These vaccines have all entered the third stage in the tests. The last test was conducted on thousands of people. This is why the entry of the vaccine in the US market is expected to start by the end of December or early next year. Some companies have already started manufacturing the vaccine in millions of doses. It is expected that the vaccine will be made available globally by the spring of 2021, as the results of research in the second level produced good indicators”.

Concerning the second wave of COVID-19 that is expected, Dr Al-Adsani highlighted that some countries have already gone through the second wave of the pandemic, but most of them were not faced with the same force of the beginning of the severe war with the virus, adding that as soon as the cases emerged, the situation was quickly controlled like in Italy.

He stressed that the expectations for another COVID-19 wave are high to appear around the fall season and start of the winter season especially with cases of influenza and chest infections seen in abundance in the winter season particularly with the opening of schools in some countries.

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