TYH: ‘Tis the season for runny noses, muscle pain and headaches
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Flu season. It’s here and you might want to prepare yourself for it. According to the Centers for Disease Control around 56,000 people die from the flu or flu-like illnesses each year, so let’s take a look at how we can prevent them.
Mike Gagel, Regional Manager of Communicable Disease for Northern Health says that it can be hard to tell whether you have a common cold or the flu, but there are some signs, such as muscle pains which Gagel says is strictly related to the flu.
Washing your hands is something Gagel stresses when it comes to flu prevention, “wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. So you should wash your hands for about 20 seconds minimum under warm and soapy water.” Not only is washing your hands important, but he mentions that the flu shot and simply not going to work in order to not spread the flu are great preventative measures.
Gagel also wants to help change the misconception surrounding the vaccine, “you cannot get the flu from the flu vaccine. The flu vaccine is made from what’s called a split virus…so the virus is killed. All of the vaccines this year in Canada are called inactivated influenza vaccines, so you cannot get the flu from the flu vaccine,” he told us.
