With the cooler weather in southwestern Ontario comes cold and flu season.
Chatham-Kent’s medical officer Dr David Colby is urging everyone who can to get a flu shot.
“Part of the COVID strategy is to encourage everybody to get a flu shot this year because the symptoms can be confusing between influenza and COVID.”
This year’s flu vaccine should be available at Chatham-Kent doctors’ offices and pharmacies any day now.
Symptoms of COVID-19 and the flu are very similar, so Colby says the more protection everyone has, the better.
“The more people we get vaccinated against influenza, the less we’ll have confusion with regard to COVID-19,” Colby says. “Also, if people get both infections, the weakened state from one will increase the severity of the other.”
Colby says for both influenza and COVID-19, protecting yourself also protects everyone else.
“Any measure that prevents people from being infected with influenza will have its benefit in that there are fewer people down the line that are in contact with that person who end up getting infected.”
Colby says Ontario is one of the most progressive jurisdictions for providing free flu shots for everyone, which shouldn’t be taken for granted.