It may still feel like the dog days of summer as the end of August nears, but flu season is fast approaching.
When is the right time to pull back the syringe?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending people over the age of six months should get their flu shot in the next month or two, giving their bodies plenty of time to build up immunity before peak flu season.
Experts warn there's a fine line between early enough and too early, according to Healthline. Since immunity lasts between four and six months, it would be best for some people to push their vaccination date to late September or early October.
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And this year could be especially essential for the shot as people emerge into a 'new normal' after two winters of COVID protocols that kept germs at bay.
“I worry about it because I think with all the social distancing and mask wearing people have not been getting infected, which is a great thing, but they also haven’t been building up immunity,”Dr. Dean Blumberg, the chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California Davis Children’s Hospital, explained to Healthline. “So those people who don’t get immunized, there’s going to be a significantly larger proportion of them who don’t have any recent experience with influenza infections. And that could lead to a higher rate of infection and also more severe cases.”
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The Huffington Post reports that early October is likely to coincide for some folks with the availability of the omicron variant-targeted booster shot, which is anticipated to become available for most adults at the beginning of the fall.
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