BBC Morning Live doctor says reduce risk of cold and flu in just 45 seconds

A doctor has taken to BBC Morning Live to warn people that doing a simple 45 second task will help prevent them getting ill this year. The cold and flu is common especially as we approach the winter season with a cold month putting us at risk of these sort of illnesses.

Speaking on show today (November 12), Dr Xand Van Tulleken said that the task takes less than a minute and it should be something that everyone who is eligible does. When asked by viewer why people should get the flu vaccine every single year, he explained that it changes every year, stressing: "The uptake of the flu vaccine is way lower than it should be" with NHS Peterborough and Cambridgeshire saying for the flu vaccine it’s only a 35% uptake of the people who are eligible and under 30% for the Covid vaccine of those who are eligible.

He said: "So get out there. It took me 45 seconds from walking in to leaving - they do it so quickly you can pick online. It’s very easy to do. It’s free and quick." The doctor also brought out two dog shaped balloons and explained why it's crucial we get the flu vaccine every year, explaining: "On the surface of this yellow balloon dog there are Xs and those represent surface proteins.

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"Now what the flu virus' job is to do is get inside you and hijack your cells to make more copies of the virus that you then spread around when you cough and you sneeze. It does it is by binding your cells using these proteins which I’ve marked with an X. But over the years as flu transmits and makes more copies of itself, it mutates. So what starts as proteins looking like Xs, can end up a year later looking like zeros.

"Now those are the proteins that your immune system recognises so your immune system is remembering this flu from last year [the Xs] but it’s mutated and it’s become this flu [the zeros]. But there’s an additional thing that flu can do to escape your immune system so that’s called genetic drift where gradually the genes drift and mutate."

Putting the blue and orange balloon dogs together he says that if they both get inside your body they can swap their genes around in your body. Your immune system will not recognise the mutated flu as a result. It can also be referred to as viral re-assortment. So that’s why you keep having it as the vaccine is slightly different every year, he concluded.