Healthcare workers were more apt to get the flu shot than the COVID-19 vaccine this year. Hospital workers specifically, meanwhile, were less likely to get the flu shot after the pandemic rather than before it. This is according to two studies conducted by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research groups. The research was published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
In the first study, the investigators evaluated reports of healthcare workers getting flu and COVID-19 shots from January to June 2023. Of healthcare workers at hospitals, 81% got their flu vaccines and 17.2% received their COVID-shots; 47.1% of workers at nursing homes received their flu shots and 22.8% got their COVID-19 shots.
In the second report, the team found that healthcare worker flu shot uptake went up before the pandemic. Uptake surged from 88.6% in the 2017-18 season to 90.7% in 2019-20. Things changed once the pandemic started. That’s when 85.9% of people got the flu vaccine in 2020-2021, which fell to 81.1% in 2022-23.
“Additional efforts are needed to implement evidence-based strategies to increase vaccination coverage among HCP [healthcare professionals] and to identify factors associated with recent declines in influenza vaccination coverage,” the researchers wrote.The news comes as another study found that getting the COVID-19 and flu shot together was as effective against poor outcomes as getting the shots separately. The research indicates that this could help increase intake of the vaccines. Data that was part of the study came from 3,442,996 individuals. The study was conducted by Pfizer and Genesis Research.
