With the COVID vaccine rolling out there's a chance you can boost your resistance to the virus by getting a flu shot. A new study finds people receiving flu vaccinations are significantly less likely to test positive for coronavirus. Moreover, if a flu shot recipient does contract COVID, researchers say they have better odds of avoiding serious symptoms. Study authors assessed medical data on over 27,000 people tested for COVID-19 between March and July 2020. Among that group, 13,000 received the annual influenza vaccine during the prior flu season. Four percent of those vaccine recipients tested positive for COVID. Conversely, around 5% of the unvaccinated group had a positive test. Results reveal people getting the flu vaccine also have a significantly lower risk of hospitalization due to COVID. Despite those findings, researchers did not find a noticeable difference in mortality rate between the vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. Considering researchers of another study have concluded COVID is responsible for a tenfold increase in excess deaths in the U.S. between March 2020 and January 2021 (from 2% to 23%), any additional protection you can get is helpful.