Americans should make getting a flu vaccine a priority this year, and stop a “backsliding in terms of vaccine confidence” that’s occurred over the last several years, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is urging.
In an interview Friday on SirusXM, Adams said the COVID-19 pandemic makes the upcoming flu season “the most important” in decades in the United States, Bloomberg reported.
“We don’t want the double whammy of our ICUs being overwhelmed with flu cases, in addition to COVID-19 cases, but we also need to socialize the idea of vaccinations,” Adams said, the news outlet reported.
A bad flu season could put even more strain on the health system resources, which are especially limited in current coronavirus epicenters in Florida and California, Axios reported.
"This is the most important flu season that we've faced in, I'd say my lifetime,” he said in the interview, Axios reported.
“We’ve been backsliding in terms of vaccine confidence over the last several years. We almost lost our measles eradication status last year as a country,” he continued.
“So we really need to understand that 50% of adults, slightly under that, get their flu vaccine in any given year."
"And if we have that level of compliance for COVID vaccine, then it doesn't matter how effective or how safe this vaccine is, it's still not going to help us stop this outbreak," Adams added, Axios reported.
“And I am hopeful. I'm hopeful that because of coronavirus, we may actually see vaccine uptake increase across the country, particularly for vaccinations like the flu vaccine."
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