Is it safe to get COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccinations at the same time?

With the triad of respiratory viruses present in our day-to-day, it is recommended that individuals receive both COVID-19, flu, and occasionally RSV and MPox vaccinations. However, there is a common misconception that multiple shots at once are “too much” or will overwhelm the immune system.

Medically, this is not supported. Not only is getting multiple vaccinations at once safe, but it is something Dr. Annette Regan, adjunct assistant professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, said has been done in certain populations for years.

“It’s safe to get multiple vaccines in one visit,” Regan said. “We do this a lot with little kids … and we’ve been doing that for decades and we know that’s pretty safe.”

Dr. Joshua Williams, a practicing pediatrician and vaccine safety expert in Denver, Colo., expanded on the norm of receiving multiple vaccines in a single visit.

“The current recommendation from the CDC is that you can get all those vaccines for which you are due, at the same time,” Williams said. “I think part of that is it decreases the burden on people to come back for multiple appointments … but also decreases the amount of time that people are susceptible to these different things in the community.”

This safety is universal for any combination of these four vaccines, even though they create immunity in different ways. Both the flu and RSV vaccinations work through a more traditional route, where the vaccine includes an inactivated virus that will not infect the body. Instead, this bit of virus can train the immune system to recognize the larger pathogen that it is from and prepare the immune system to attack it when exposure occurs.

Aside from the Novavax shot, which works by injecting a piece of virus similar to flu and RSV vaccinations, COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines. These do not contain any virus but instead give the body instructions in the form of mRNA to create proteins that can defend against COVID-19 if infection occurs.

The bottom line, Regan said, is that regardless of the mechanism of action, the efficacy of these vaccines will not be affected if given together. “We don’t have reason to believe that they’re going to perform differently when you’re getting multiple vaccines at the same time,” Regan said. “You’re still going to get antibodies to all three of those pathogens.”

Physicians and health care specialists often grapple with how to communicate with patients who are vaccine-hesitant, especially when receiving multiple shots at once. Often, providers go back to explaining the purpose of getting a vaccine, especially as we engage in the politicization of vaccinations, Williams said. Specifically, when facing the COVID-19 pandemic, Williams said he has heard the same string of questions. “Patients may follow up with questions like ‘Can’t we just get the natural infection instead, or a home remedy as something else to use to try and keep off the infection?’”

Acknowledging the implications of vaccine hesitancy is necessary to discussing vaccine safety, especially when pharmaceutical and scientific solutions to disease develop at a rapid rate, Williams said. Health care specialists must call for more practicing physicians to expand the line of communication and transparency in the conversation with concerned patients about how their decisions affect their loved ones, according to Williams.

“There are those people in our communities who are immunosuppressed,” Williams said. “When we make an individual decision to vaccinate ourselves and vaccinate our kids and vaccinate our family members against these different diseases … we’re not just protecting ourselves. We’re helping protect people who can’t protect themselves.”

In addition to protecting communities, the individual convenience of getting multiple vaccines simultaneously is a public health win, Regan said. Simply put, the easier something is to do, the more people will do it. This is something drug development companies also understand. On the vaccine development horizon, Moderna is working on a combined inoculation for COVID and flu—an endeavor Regan said drives home the point that these vaccines are still effective if co-administered.

However, these innovations must exist alongside initiatives that work to undo past harm caused by public health in historically marginalized communities. Vaccine hesitancy, Williams said, must be met with honest conversations that acknowledge the validity of mistrust in these communities and collaborate to forge a path forward.

This post appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.