For most healthy people, flu is an unpleasant illness. However, this year who knows what will happen when flu meets coronavirus. Flu jabs 2020 are important. Please get one, protect yourself and the NHS.
If you’re fit and healthy, flu is usually just a nasty illness. It makes you feel really poorly for a week or so, and wiped out for a couple of weeks afterwards.
Flu Jabs 2020 – important if you’re at risk
But some people are more at risk from flu. For some it can lead to very serious complications, even if they have been well beforehand.
Those at increased risk include:
- Over 65’s
- Pregnant women
- At risk groups, which cover those with a long term condition (e.g. diabetes), those with a weakened immune system (e.g. cancer patients), heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, kidney disease, liver disease, chronic neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s
- People in long stay residential homes
- Health and social care workers
- Carers
- Two and three year olds
Not just a Common Cold
Dr Amanda Doyle OBE, is chief clinical officer for NHS Blackpool and NHS Fylde and Wyre Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). She said:
“Flu is not just a common cold. It has the potential to be a serious illness for certain vulnerable people. Although flu is extremely common and affects thousands of us each year, it can have consequences for some people, such as pneumonia and bronchitis, which could require hospital treatment.
“If you are in any of the ‘at risk’ groups then you are entitled to a free flu jab. The flu vaccine changes every year to fight the latest strains of flu, so even if you had a jab last winter you need another one this year to stay safe.
“It’s really important that those people in the at-risk groups don’t put off getting the flu vaccine.
“We understand that it can be hard to find time, but a quick appointment to have your jab will protect you, your family, colleagues and friends.”
Our Flu Jabs 2020
Editors Footnote: I don’t fall into an ‘at risk’ category and am a technically healthy individual. However, I don’t have the time for flu, or the inclination to be so ill! Flu really does make you feel very ill when you get it!
So I too have a flu jab every year. I pop along to my local supermarket, pay for it and have one there and then.
You might get a bit of a sore arm, have a runny nose or feel a bit under the weather for a day or two, but it sure beats a dose of the flu.
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