The health authorities, on the other hand, call on the most vulnerable people to be vaccinated against the seasonal flu.

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Omer Messinger / Sipa USA / Sipa

  • A study, posted on a preprints platform dedicated to medical research, indicates that the seasonal flu vaccine could have protective effects against Covid-19.

  • The researchers found that hospital workers vaccinated against the flu last winter were less likely to contract the coronavirus.

  • But their work has not yet been validated by the scientific community.

In the absence of a vaccine available against Covid-19, health authorities are encouraging all people at risk - the elderly or those suffering from chronic diseases or obesity - to be vaccinated against the seasonal flu.

The objective: to limit the influenza epidemic as much as possible, in order to prevent flu patients from adding to those of Covid-19 and no longer clogging hospitals while the coronavirus, whose symptoms are similar , actively circulates in the territory.

This vaccine could also have an unsuspected virtue: it could have protective effects against Covid-19, according to the results of a Dutch study published on MedRxiv, a preprints platform dedicated to medical research.

But this work is still preliminary and does not mean that the flu vaccine provides effective protection against the coronavirus.

A possible improvement in the immune response

The authors of this work observed that “SARS-CoV-2 infections were less common among hospital staff vaccinated in the Netherlands during winter 2019/2020 against seasonal influenza”.

“Several epidemiological studies have also suggested cross-protection between influenza vaccination and Covid-19 during the current pandemic,” the researchers say in support of their conclusions.

In addition, according to the results of

in vitro

tests conducted

by these researchers, the influenza vaccine would induce an immune response against infection with SARS-CoV-2, "including an improvement in cytokine responses after stimulation of human immune cells. with SARS-CoV-2 ”.

In short: the immune response of the body exposed to Covid-19 - which struggles by releasing inflammatory molecules - would be more effective.

However, in severe forms of coronavirus, many patients have suffered from a "cytokine storm", which corresponds to a runaway of the immune system, which overreacts to the Covid-19 infection.

"These data, combined with recent similar independent reports, argue in favor of a beneficial effect of influenza vaccination against influenza and Covid-19", assure the authors.

Conclusions to be confirmed

But before getting carried away and giving the flu vaccine anti-Covid virtues, the study's authors admit: "the mechanism behind such an effect is unknown".

And their conclusions have yet to be validated by the scientific community and confirmed by additional research.

"To say that immunity against influenza would have an effect on other respiratory infections is only a hypothesis which has never been scientifically proven", reminded the

World

at the beginning of October

 Matthieu Revest, infectious disease specialist at Rennes University Hospital.

If the anti-Covid effect of the influenza vaccine therefore remains to be proven, vaccination against influenza is more recommended than ever, in particular by the Academy of Medicine and learned pediatric societies, which advocate widespread vaccination of the most vulnerable people. at risk, including pregnant women and babies over six months.

Each year, the seasonal flu causes 10,000 to 15,000 deaths in France.

For its part, research on an anti-Covid vaccine is progressing.

On Monday, the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced that its vaccine elicited an encouraging immune response against the coronavirus in the patients tested.

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