key: cord-255817-asdjlq07
authors: Ozaras, Resat; Cirpin, Rasim; Duman, Habibe; Duran, Arif; Arslan, Ozgur; Leblebicioglu, Hakan
title: An open call for influenza vaccination pending the new wave of COVID‐19
date: 2020-07-14
journal: J Med Virol
DOI: 10.1002/jmv.26272
sha: 
doc_id: 255817
cord_uid: asdjlq07

In their study, Yue et al. reported influenza co-infection among COVID-19 patients as 57.3%. The study included a period of January 12-February 21, 2020 in Wuhan, China. We have recently detected this rate as 0.54% in Turkey. This difference between rates of co-infection can be explained by the seasonality of the influenza virus. Our study included the period of March 10-May 10. Another study from Wuhan, including the period of 28 January-29 February 2020, reported the rate of influenza co-infection among critically ill COVID-19 patients as 49.5%. Zhu et al. reported 2.7% influenza co-infections among COVID-19 patients, in their study from January 22-February 2. Two studies from USA reported low rates of 0.08% in March 16-April 20, and 0.9% in March 3-March 25. Therefore, studies from the influenza season reported very high rates of co-infection. When the COVID-19 came to Europe and America, the influenza season was almost over and thus the co-infection rates are low. A recent research found moderate to strong correlation between higher influenza vaccine uptake in the elderly and lower COVID-19 deaths in Italy. This might be explained by the prevention of influenza co-infection. In elderly, both influenza and COVID-19 have higher rates of mortality. The impact of prevention of influenza in this fragile group is higher. Current influenza-COVID-19 co-infection reports suggest that co-infection rates are as high as 57% when influenza is circulating. Pending the new waves of COVID-19, it is reasonable to recommend influenza vaccination especially for elderly, but most probably, to general population. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

There have been other reports describing rates of the coinfection. Another study from Wuhan, including the period of 28 January 2020 to 29 February 2020, reported the rate of influenza coinfection among critically ill COVID-19 patients as 49.5%. 3 

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