Genesis Health System will once again try to prevent what it's predicting will be a worse-than-usual flu season.
It will give free vaccinations to elementary school children in the Quad Cities for the 11th year in a row, starting at Grant Wood Elementary School in Bettendorf tomorrow.
Genesis Health System's Craig Cooper says stopping the flu among young kids is the most effective way to prevent it from spreading.
"They carry it very effectively into the community, where people who are older, younger or have some sort of chronic condition are more likely to have severe complications to the flu."
Cooper says thousands of people die annually from flu complications. It's killed at least 72 people in Australia this year, which is now at the end of a historically bad flu season.
"Which is sometimes an indicator of what will happen in the Northern Hemisphere. That's one of the ways that they try to manufacture the vaccine based on what happened the previous year or what happened in the Southern Hemisphere"
Confirmed cases of the flu remain low so far in both Iowa and Illinois. Flu season runs from about October to May.