BATON ROUGE - It's that time again: flu season is less than a month away and it's time to start thinking about getting your flu shot.

The CDC estimates that during the 2022-2023 season, the vaccine prevented 6 million flu-related illnesses and 3,700 deaths.

"The biggest thing [people] can do is go ahead and get flu shot," family medicine at Baton Rouge General doctor Jacob Wood said. "We recommend getting those mid-September, mid-October so that the flu shot activity sort of peaks at the same time as flu season, generally in the middle of the winter."

While the exact strand for the 2024 season is not confirmed, typical symptoms are cough, fever, chills, runny or stuffy nose, and a sore throat.

Dr. Wood says the most at risk for the flu are people "over 65, pregnant women, and people who are immunocompromised because of medications or disease processes that they may have going on."

Flu symptoms are similar to those of COVID-19 so professionals recommend always going to see a doctor when you are experiencing them so that it can be properly treated.

A major concern of patients is that they will get more likely to get the flu if they get the vaccine.

"That's valid, and I hear that from a lot of my patients," said Dr. Oanh Truong another family medicine doctor, said. "It does give you some side effects but that basically means your body is creating an immune response to it so that's actually really good. You can take Tylenol or Ibuprofen to handle those side effects, but really it's the most important way to get you out of the hospital."

For more information about the flu, click here.