Flu Season is here and more and more people are wanting to get their flu shots. After a devastating 2017 season when more than 2.8 million deaths occurred. Through the last week, health providers gave out 655,823 flu shots, which is about 30 percent more than last year. Considering that more flu shots were given out, more people are becoming concerned about their health and taking the flu vaccine seriously.

Last year, there were 342 deaths in San Diego County alone. This year, however, doctors have given 85 percent more vaccines as they gave during the 2017-18 season.

“I think one of the problems was first of all patients have to get vaccinated before they actually get exposed to the virus so sometimes patients are getting vaccinated too late,” Dr. Jan Penvose Yi said. “It takes about two to three weeks to gain full benefits from the vaccine.”

The recommended time to get the flu shot is before the winter season begins. However, Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan, the county’s deputy public health officer said in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune that the flu season doesn’t get going until after Christmas.

“At the moment, it’s still moving along as expected, but last year, everyone will recall that we had a huge surge of cases in the last week of the calendar year,” Thihalolipavan said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “All we really know at the moment is that it’s still early.”

Since doctors have been able to give out 85 percent more vaccines already, it just shows that people are becoming more proactive with their health. Others choose not to get the flu shot because it can have negative side effects.

“There is the really common misconceptions about the flu vaccine or any vaccine can be associated with autism but there is no good study that supports that’s true and actually the one study that people believed was true has since been disproven,” Yi said.