As the winter season looms, it is time for employers to consider accommodating the administration of flu shots at their workplace in order to protect people, says GEM Health Care\u2019s Gaye Moffett. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGet the flu shot!\u201d she urges. \u201cYou want your staff to stay healthy, and I know now there’s a lot of work-from-home, but you want staff to stay healthy, right? And you don’t want them to infect others,\u201d Moffett says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public health authorities have declared the end of October into November as the ideal time to update your flu shot, and GEM has been commissioned by several large organizations and corporations to administer workplace shots. These include accounting firms and investment firms, which face intense deadlines and long workdays spent attempting to meet deadlines. Employers want those workers to remain free of illness, Moffett says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the more people who receive a flu shot, the better, as it will encourage herd immunity. It will also protect vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and the very young. While the flu shot will not necessarily prevent everyone from getting sick, it will diminish symptoms and assuage some suffering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Encourage herd immunity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Moffett would like to dispel the myth that getting the flu shot causes you to get the flu or flu symptoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat may have happened to them is that they may have been exposed to the virus before they took the flu shot, which makes them vulnerable to the virus, so they come down with the flu,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don’t know when you kind of get it. And then you have the shot, and it takes about five to 10 days for it to work within your body to build your immunity, and then you’re protected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you had a flu shot last year, that does not negate you from getting an additional shot this season. That\u2019s because immunity only extends for six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven if people got it last year, they still need to get it,\u201d Moffett says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moffett says that every party that provides flu shots must be certified by the province, which GEM is. This means they meet a long list of criteria in order to be qualified to administer the shots, including proper refrigeration capabilities and trained healthcare workers. \u201c I have to prove that I’m a bona fide organization, that I have the insurance, and that I’ve got the capacity,\u201d Moffett says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GEM Health Care certainly has the capacity to help prevent the spread of flu this season, and workplaces are urged to take advantage of their expertise and the ease of in-office immunization that GEM provides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the winter season looms, it is time for employers to consider accommodating the administration of flu shots at their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n