According to research published on Tuesday in PLoS One, flu vaccination may reduce the risk of serious disease caused by the coronavirus, including life-threatening sepsis infections and strokes.
The researchers looked at nearly 75,000 patients with COVID-19, half of whom had received the latest flu vaccine. They also found that patients who received flu shots were less likely to be admitted to intensive care units or visit emergency departments, and they had less severe blood clots in their legs compared to those who didn’t receive flu shots.
However, studies like this one cannot show that flu vaccinations improved outcomes or explain how they did so. Stronger and bigger investigations would aid in “validating these findings and determining if a greater emphasis on influenza vaccination can reduce poor outcomes in SARS-CoV-2-positive patients,” the authors stated.
Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections enhance immune systems in fully vaccinated people, according to a recent study.
One month after a COVID-19 outbreak at a German nursing home, physicians took blood samples from the 23 elderly residents and four nursing care staff members who tested positive. They discovered that vaccinated individuals who were still infected with the virus had much greater levels of antibodies thereafter than vaccinated people who were not infected, as well as more antibodies capable of neutralizing variations of the virus.
According to coauthor Jorg Timm of Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, the data imply that when most individuals have established some level of protection to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the spontaneous infection may have some advantage, but only if it does not result in severe symptoms or illness.
