Hospital workers were less likely to get corona after flu shot due to ‘trained immune response’

Nijmegen

They calculate that staff members of the university hospital who got vaccinated against the flu virus last year, contracted SARS-CoV-2 less often than colleagues who did not get the flu shot. In addition, they have shown with laboratory research that the flu vaccine in cells of healthy people improves the immune response.

That ‘trained immune response’ can have beneficial side effects during this time. ‘In addition to protection against influenza, the vaccine could have beneficial effects against the new corona virus,’ says Professor of Experimental Medicine Mihai Netea. The research on the medical website MedRxiv has not yet received a so-called peer review by independent colleagues and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. The researchers calculate that of the 184 hospital employees who contracted the corona virus, 42 percent had taken the flu shot. Vaccination is advised in hospital care to protect patients. Of the – much larger – group of more than 10,000 healthcare workers who remained free of the corona virus, 54 percent had been vaccinated. The researchers calculate that in the non-vaccinated group 2.23 percent contracted corona and only 1.33 percent in the vaccinated group. That makes a difference of about 40 percent.

More than three-quarters of the staff who became infected had direct contact with patients, of the staff who did not get the virus, only 42 percent.

–