(WSIL)---Flu season is here and the vaccine can help keep severe symptoms at bay.
Every year, health officials try to predict which strains of the flu will be active during the season.
But the goal of the vaccine isn't to prevent the virus, but to prevent hospitalizations.
The vaccines have 40-60% effectiveness, depending on the year.
With COVID-19 still taking up many resources in hospitals, pharmacists say the flu can cause symptoms that are severe enough for intensive care.
In order to help reduce the number of patients in hospitals over all, pharmacists recommend getting the flu shot as soon as you can.
"Dealing with COVID, and we're dealing with the pandemic, ideally we want to keep people out of the hospitals. We just have to have those hospitals and staff and everything available in case we do start seeing that spike again, which we did see, and we saw hospitals full. So if we can get flu shots, and we can get flu shots to keep flu patients out so we can treat the more serious COVID patients, that's kind of the goal," said Kim Wieter, Pharmacist in Charge at Byrd Watson Pharmacy.Â
Health officials won't know the effectiveness of this year's flu vaccine until later in the season.
