Vaccination against Covid and flu: are we exposed to a greater risk of side effects by receiving a double injection?

Pain in the arm and increased fatigue a few hours after receiving their Covid vaccine, many French people remember this sensation, which is unpleasant to say the least, and remain somewhat apprehensive about the idea of ​​receiving a new vaccine. So, when we tell them about a joint flu and Covid vaccination, some people get scared.

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However, there is no evidence of an increase in “reactogenicity” when several vaccines are combined. The example of MMR (vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella), administered in the form of a single injection to children for decades, goes in this direction. The doctor Bruno Lina, questioned on this subject by Le Figaro confirms this: “We do not double the risk of having a reaction, nor its frequency, nor its intensity” by receiving a flu vaccine at the same time as a Covid vaccine.

No pharmacovigilance signal

It is also incorrect to speak of side effects regarding the pain and feverish state which can appear after a vaccine. The established term is “reactogenicity” and it is normal to feel such sensations: it is proof that the body is reacting and that the vaccine is working.

In 2022, Professor Albert Sotto, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at the University Hospital Center of Nîmes, explained to La Dépêche du Midi that it is “possible that people who receive two injections at the same time feel pain at the two injection sites as well as an increase in their temperature a few hours after vaccination”, but he recalled that these are ” mild side effects.

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Anxious to reassure the population, the Ministry of Health recalled in a press briefing that double vaccination does not cause additional adverse effects. “We have no feedback in this direction from a scientific and technical point of view,” explains the ministry, as well as no “pharmacovigilance signal”.

Are the beneficial effects the same?

Another belief, erroneous, concerning this joint vaccination campaign against flu and Covid: the double injection is no less effective than two vaccines, carried out a few weeks apart. Le Figaro questioned Professor Mathieu Molimard, representative of the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (SFPT). He explains that “this concomitant vaccination does not reduce the immune response of either vaccine compared to a separate injection three weeks apart”, as demonstrated by an English study.

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This year, more than 17.2 million people are invited by Health Insurance to be vaccinated against the two viruses of influenza and Covid, indicates Health. govt. This includes people aged 65 and over, people under 65 suffering from certain chronic illnesses (including children aged 6 months and over), pregnant women, people suffering from obesity and people staying in a follow-up care establishment or in a medico-social accommodation establishment, whatever their age. The ministry recommends joint vaccination, for greater practicality and recalls that reactogenicity varies greatly from one person to another.