How to Get the Flu Vaccine at Home With a Simple Nasal Spray—No Needles Required
FluMist lets you get vaccinated at home—no needles, no waiting room, no hassle
Getting the flu is more than just uncomfortable—it can actually cause serious health complications (and even death) for older adults or those with pre-existing conditions such as asthma. Despite this, CDC data shows that only half of us got a flu vaccine during the 2021 to 2022 flu season. Why? Perhaps some people skipping the shot are among the 25 percent of adults Harvard Health says are afraid of needles. Or maybe their schedule simply hasn’t allowed them the time. Whatever the reason, there’s room to reimagine how to administer the flu shot from the comfort of a home with a quick and painless FluMist vaccine.
What is FluMist nasal spray flu vaccine?
If your main barrier to getting a flu vaccination is time or a fear of needles, AstraZeneca’s nasal spray flu vaccine—the only one approved by the Food and Drug Administration—can now be delivered right to your home and administered on your own schedule.
“FluMist is an intranasal, live, attenuated flu vaccine,” says Ravi Jhaveri, MD, Division Head of Infectious Disease at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “So the idea is that it’s been weakened significantly. It only functions at a colder temperature, which is typically what is in your nose. And so you give it in your nose, it’s able to replicate and stimulate your immune system, but it doesn’t go anywhere else in your body the way a natural flu virus would.”
Woman's World Answers
FluMist Home now delivers the vaccine to your doorstep
The FluMist was approved to be administered at most doctors’ offices and pharmacies in 2003. And for the first time, you can now have the vaccine delivered straight to your doorstep to administer yourself through the FluMist Home program. While the vaccine is typically free under most commercial insurance plans, there’s an $8.99 delivery fee to have it sent to your home.
As for how it works, Dr. Jhaveri explains,“It’s put into your nose on either side, and the virus basically interacts with the cells in your nose, specifically the immune cells. It sort of introduces the flu virus to your system and then allows your immune system to coordinate a response that would protect you later, should you be exposed to a natural flu virus.”
Key differences between FluMist and the flu shot
The biggest difference between a nasal flu vaccine and a traditional injection is “the fact that FluMist is actually the live, weakened or attenuated version,” says Dr. Jhaveri. “The injectable forms of the virus are killed, and then the virus proteins are separated out. So it’s the individual proteins—two of the major proteins of the flu virus—that are in the injectable version.”
Who’s a good candidate for FluMist?
Not everyone is a good fit for every medication or vaccination, and FluMist is no different. “When we think about FluMist, we first consider eligibility,” says Dr. Jhaveri.
- Age eligibility: People between the ages of 2 and 49 are eligible to use FluMist, says Dr. Jhaveri.
- Health eligibility: Certain health conditions could exclude you from being able to take FluMist. “Typically those are major functional immune system conditions and major heart or lung conditions,” says Dr. Jhaveri.
However, “in general, the restrictions are fairly narrow,” says Dr. Jhaveri. Outside of eligibility for taking FluMist, Dr. Jhaveri says that people who have found needles “traumatic” or “had a prior reaction to an injectable version” may particularly enjoy FluMist, especially since they can now administer it themselves at home.
If you have questions about your eligibility, speak with your doctor. And if you’re ordering FluMist Home online, the screening questions on the website can help you determine whether it’s right for you, says Dr. Jhaveri.
Step-by-step guide to using FluMist at home
If you are not used to taking medications on your own, giving yourself a vaccination at home may seem intimidating. But according to FluMist manufacturer AstraZeneca the process is simple and takes only four steps:
- Remove the gray cap (do not remove dose-divider clip.)
- Spray in one nostril
- Remove dose-divider clip
- Spray into the other nostril
If you need more instruction, AstraZeneca features a helpful how-to-use video on its website.
Possible side effects of FluMist
“I will be honest,” says Dr. Jhaveri. “It feels a little weird when you haven’t done it before. The idea of the liquid going in your nose. When I counsel people, as we have given it in some of our college programs for college students, we’ll sort of say it’s not going to hurt, but it just feels a little strange the first time.”
He adds, “There might be just a little bit of a runny nose or nasal drip right after you get it, but after that, it’s fine. You don’t typically have the sort of severe side effects of fever and achiness the way many of us had when we first got our first COVID vaccine or some of the other adjuvanted vaccines.”
Dr. Jhaveri says that for many people, the benefits of being able to administer the vaccine themselves without ever having to leave the house often outweighs the potential strange sensation or nasal drip.
“I think when you think about injectable, you’re tethered to getting it in some sort of either medical setting or pharmacy, and we all know that there are sort of expectations of time and effort associated with that,” says Dr. Jhaveri. “And so particularly with this product, giving it at home sort of un-tethers all of those expectations, and you can do it on your own terms.”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
