t’s , which for most people means getting immunized for flu and COVID-19 (and for infants, pregnant women, or people 75 and older). Public-health officials have said before that getting the two shots at the same time is safe, but some people have remained worried about receiving both vaccines together. Now, a new study confirms that safety.
In what the researchers say is the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial analyzing the side effects of the co-administration of the vaccines in the U.S., they found no difference among people who received the COVID-19 and flu shots simultaneously in different arms and those who got the shots spaced apart by a week or two.
Dr. Emmanuel Walter, chief medical office of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and professor of pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine, and his team studied 335 people who were randomly assigned over two visits to receive a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and either a placebo flu shot or an actual flu shot. The visits were spaced one to two weeks apart.
Side effects, most of which were mild, aren't unusual for these shots. Some people reported things like pain at the injection site, fever, muscle and joint aches, headache, chills, fatigue, nausea, and swelling under the arms during the seven days following the shots. But Walter and his team found no difference between the two groups in the rates of these side effects, and no difference in quality-of-life surveys given to both groups.
: “The bottom line is that whe.