Your questions, answered "Is there a recommended interval between receiving the flu vaccine and the coronavirus vaccine? If so, how long?" — Peg in Pennsylvania No, there is no need to space out your annual flu shot from the coronavirus vaccine — whether you're getting an initial dose or a booster shot. You can get them at the same time. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially recommended that people wait a couple of weeks between the coronavirus vaccine and others, that was "out of an abundance of caution" when the vaccines were new, the agency said. It has since stated that the coronavirus vaccine may be administered "without regard to timing of other vaccines." Kelly Moore, president and CEO of the Immunization Action Coalition, recently told The Washington Post's Allyson Chiu that since health experts now have so much information and experience with the coronavirus vaccines, "we are quite comfortable saying it's fine to give them with other vaccines." If you do get them simultaneously, you may be a bit more likely to experience some of the common side effects from the vaccines, such as fever, headaches and body aches, Moore explained. You might also notice some additional arm soreness if you get two shots in one day. "But in our experience giving multiple vaccines at once, it's not additive," she said. "It's not like you have double the reaction because you had two shots instead of one." In the future, you may not even need two separate vaccines. In April, Moderna, the company that developed one of the messenger RNA coronavirus vaccines, announced plans to combine a coronavirus vaccine and a flu vaccine into a single shot. All that said, as Chiu reported, you're certainly welcome to wait between the vaccines. But if you do, be sure to remember to go back for the other shot within the recommended time frame. "You should get the flu shot when it's a good time to get the flu shot. You don't want to put it off," William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told The Post. | 
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