
This flu season is a particularly severe one, and it’s not over yet—health officials say flu activity will likely remain elevated for at least several more weeks. But if you already caught the flu, are you in the clear for the rest of the season? Unfortunately, no. Experts say it is possible to catch the flu twice in one season. That’s because there are multiple strains of flu viruses circulating at any one time, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. So getting sick with one strain of flu won’t necessarily protect you from a different strain. But the good news is that it’s pretty rare to catch the flu twice in a single season. Having this happen would be “quite a stroke of bad luck,” Schaffner told Live Science.