A study of over 30,000 health-care workers in Qatar found that those who got the flu vaccine were also protected from COVID-19 — but the effect might not last long
Influenza vaccines have a surprising health benefit: they might also prevent COVID-19, particularly in its most severe formsA study of more than 30,000 health-care workers in Qatar found that those who got a flu jab were nearly 90% less likely to developThe study, which was conducted in late 2020, before
To minimize the impact of this ‘healthy-user effect’, a team led by Laith Jamal Abu-Raddad, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar in Doha, analysed the health records of 30,774 medical workers in the country. There is probably less variation in health-related behaviour among such workers than in the general population, reducing — but probably not eliminating — bias, Abu-Raddad says.