Flu season in the United States can begin as early as this month. It typically peaks in January or February. The single best way to prevent getting the flu is to get the vaccine. It won’t protect you against every strain of flu, but it is formulated to protect against the most common strains that are going around. And even if you get a strain that you’re not vaccinated for, you will get a milder case than if you weren’t vaccinated at all, says Michele Frontale, supervising pharmacist for the Health Center.
Here on campus, you can begin your flu protection early by getting vaccinated at the free flu clinic for students, staff and faculty on Oct. 11 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. in Flanagan Gymnasium. No appointment is necessary—just bring your SU ID.
Not only will you be helping yourself, but you will be helping the University’s Health Services and Onondaga County.
“The University is a point of distribution for the county,” says Frontale. “We need to see how well we would perform if there was an emergency, such as an outbreak of a rare disease or a terrorist attack using a biological weapon. The more people we can vaccinate in a short period, the better.”
Frontale adds that the clinic will be staffed by personnel from the health center and from the county health department.
This year, getting vaccinated at the Oct. 11 clinic will get you extra protection, because Health Services is using a quadrivalent vaccine. That means the vaccine is formulated to protect against the four most common strains of flu that are predicted to be going around this year. The trivalent vaccine that was used in previous years protected against just the three strains predicted to be the most common.
