ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Flu season is just around the corner, and many medical offices and some pharmacy businesses will be offering vaccines to help people get through the season with as little illness as possible.
One of those businesses is Liberal’s Walgreens store, and workers from the store’s pharmacy will be on hand to give flu shots at the upcoming Community Health Fair Oct. 5 at the Seward County Activity Center.
Walgreens Pharmacy Manager Brandon Rooney said the vaccines are covered under most commercial insurances, Medicaid and Medicaid, with no copay and no cost to insured patients.
Rooney said Walgreens may also have flu vouchers for those who are uninsured.
“They don’t have a number on that,” he said. “It’ll be on a first come, first serve basis.”
The flu vaccine is considered the top precaution against getting the flu, along with good hygiene such as washing hands and covering coughs. Rooney said vaccine is also available at the Walgreens store at 15th Street and Kansas Avenue, and he said after working with Health Fair coordinator Janeth Vazquez, the store first became involved with the event last year. Rooney said the first year proved to be a successful one.
“We were there and gave about 110 flu vaccines to the community at the Health Fair,” he said.
Rooney did say, though, Walgreens involvement in the 2023 Health Fair was a bit last minute.
“We were actually planning a health clinic at our pharmacy at Walgreens, and we got wind of the Health Fair,” he said. “I reached out to Janeth, and she was open to our involvement.”
With each new flu season comes new strains of the illness, and for this year, scientists have opted to go with the Trivalent vaccine to fight the flu.
“There’s three different strains in each vaccine we give,” Rooney said. “The scientists go off across the globe what they’re experiencing, and they try to guess what strains we might see in the U.S.”
Rooney added high dose and Adjuvant vaccine will be available for patients 65 and older.
“The reason those are available and recommended is because as we age, our immune system gets a little bit weaker,” he said. “We need to have a higher dose to get the same immune response we would need otherwise, and that Adjuvant vaccine is a different way of getting that higher immune response. They add an extra ingredient to the vaccine for our bodies to recognize easier. Anyone over the age of 65 would get that vaccine.”
While Rooney emphasized those vaccines are only for people 65 and older, he did say those people who have no way of getting those vaccines and would like to use a flu voucher, regular strength vaccines are likewise available.
“That’s still highly recommended to use the regular strength if you can’t get the high dose,” he said.
Many Americans opt not to get immunized during flu season and still do not get ill, but Rooney said even for those people, a shot is highly recommended.
“The flu affects millions of people every year,” he said. “It can lead to infections, infecting millions of people, hundreds of thousands of doctor visits, hospital visits and sadly even thousands of deaths every year.”
Rooney said even those who do not get the flu can still be affected by it.
“You also hurt immunity,” he said. “You’re protecting others around you who might not be able to get protected – young infants, patients who don’t have access to the vaccine. It’s really important to get it. You can cause a whole host of different things – pneumonia, bronchitis, sinus infections. Some patients, regular healthy adults typically don’t get as sick. They might just fight the infection, but they could lose time from work, infect others.”
Rooney said the opportunity to provide flu shots at the Health Fair is fantastic.
“The service the Health Fair provides to the general public is next to none,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Having a whole town, surrounding areas be able to come in, get their vaccines, get a lot of lab work done all in one space relatively cheap or free in some instances is awesome.”
Immunizations typically take two weeks to take effect and give the body a full immune response by creating antibodies needed to fight the infection. Rooney said there are side effects to vaccines such as swelling, redness and soreness at the site of the injection, and some less common symptoms could include fever, aches, chills and headaches.
Rooney also said the belief a person can get the flu from vaccine is a myth.
“That’s not the case,” he said. “More than likely, you could’ve got infected prior to being vaccinated and then got the flu shortly after before the immune response took effect and you’re able to fight the infection correctly.”
Though vaccines are created every year for new strains of the flu, Rooney said this is still not an exact science.
“The scientists do their best to get the strains correct, but they might not have a perfect match of what we’re actually going to see here in the United States or even in Liberal,” he said. “If we don’t have a perfect match to the strain, it still confirms some protection and hopefully prevents severe illness, death, hospitalizations, but it is still possible to get the flu even after the vaccine, just a lot less severe typically.”
The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on much of life, and Rooney said the biggest impact the pandemic had on immunizations was the availability of more education about vaccine, namely how viruses work and how to prevent them.
“In Kansas, now we have technicians who are able to immunize because of the pandemic,” he said. “Even at the Health Fair, we’ll see a lot of the technicians giving the vaccines. When it comes to better protection against the flu because of COVID, there’s not a lot of data yet to understand the effects on COVID on the flu.”
With flu season typically peaking during winter months, Rooney said the Oct. 5 date for the Health Fair makes for a great time to get vaccinated.
“They really want you to get vaccinated prior to the end of October because the flu season really peaks December to February,” he said. “Getting the vaccine early and on time is going to be your best prevention. If you come into contact with the flu virus a couple of days prior to getting vaccinated, the vaccine’s not going to do a whole lot for you.”
The 15th annual Community Health Fair will take place from 7 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Activity Center.
