Deputy head of the Gamaleya Logunov center: when vaccinating against COVID-19, influenza vaccination is more effective 
Deputy Director of the National Research Center of Epidemiology named after NN F. Gamalei Denis Logunov disclosed that simultaneous vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza enhances the effectiveness of influenza vaccination. He stated this during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports TASS.
According to him, appropriate experiments were carried out. Scientists injected both COVID-19 and influenza vaccines at the same time. “With this application, there are only two scenarios: either vaccines due to the fact that antigens compete, block each other, that is, reduce the effectiveness of one another, or there is a possibility of strengthening,” said the deputy head of the center.
He noted that in this sense there are no restrictions on the use of vaccinations, but there is a formal side that is related to safety. “And in order to determine the safety, then all these combinations, in an amicable way, need to be carried out and tested in clinical trials,” the center representative emphasized, adding that sometimes due to lack of time to test all combinations for all vaccines, this has not yet been done.
At the same time, now you can wait only two weeks, because, according to the expert, this is the period associated with primary inflammatory reactions, which completely disappear in two weeks. “In such an interval, we will definitely not have any complications. This will not be considered a simultaneous application, “he said.
Earlier, Elena Malinnikova, head of the Department of Virology at the Russian Medical Academy of Continuing Professional Education, said that influenza can be just as difficult and have the same negative consequences as COVID -19, especially for people who have had coronavirus. According to her, the flu has always been considered by infectious disease doctors as a disease that is quite difficult to tolerate.