According to Tengiz Tsertsvadze, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and AIDS, flu vaccination will be strongly recommended this year. As Tsertsvadze told the "PalitraNews" in the "Newsroom of the Day", vaccination will be especially recommended for elderly people and for those with chronic diseases.

"My advice, a strong recommendation (I do not have the right to say the word obligatory, the government must decide on this) is to vaccinate everyone, especially those at risk - people over 60-65 and those with concomitant diseases. This does not completely rule out the possibiliy of catching flu, but the vaccine provides 70 percent protection against it, that is, if 10,000 people were infected without the flu vaccine, only 3,000 would be infected if vaccinated, which is a huge benefit. As far as I know, the vaccine has been either imported or is at the border. There will be no problem in this regard", - Tsertsvadze said.

At the same time, Tengiz Tsertsvadze does not expect a large-scale spread of flu this year compared to previous years and says that there will be fewer cases of simultaneous infection of flu and Covid 19.

"Recommendations that are given against the COVID - face masks, social distancing, refraining from crowded gatherings - automatically work for the prevention of flu, because the prevention measures for flu and COVID are absolutely identical. Therefore, I think that this year the flu epidemic will be much weaker than it was last year and a year before it. The risk of getting infected with flu and COVID altogether will be there, but it will be less than we fear of", - Tsertsvadze said.

source: IPN