The Quad Cities COVID-19 Coalition is gave a briefing Thursday, October 1.
Dr. Louis Katz, the Scott County Health Department's medical director, Dr, Bharat Motwani, infectious disease physician at Genesis, and Dr. Daniel Arnold, a physician with UnityPoint Health spoke about the convergence of the flu and COVID-19.
The panel of doctors discussed the importance of flu shots in an effort to not overwhelm the healthcare system.
Dr. Motwani said those vaccinations can happen anytime.
Dr. Arnold said there was no reason to believe that a person couldn't get both COVID-19 and the flu at the same time.
"Earlier this year in the pandemic we weren't aggressively testing both... but this season we are going to be testing aggressively for both and I anticipate we're going to catch people who have both at the same time," said Dr. Arnold.
Dr. Katz said COVID-19 is essentially more dangerous than the flu due to the higher mortality rate and higher instances of ICU visits.