One person has died in Iowa due to the flu.

The Iowa Department of Public Health announced the first flu-related death of the season was an elderly Central Iowa man. The Centers for Disease Control recommends everyone over six months of age receive a flu vaccine each year. Washington County Public Health nurse Lynn Fisher reminds people the vaccine protects against influenza, which is different from the stomach bug, “The flu that the vaccine protects against is the respiratory illness, not the stomach bug. The stomach bug, or stomach flu, is really caused by norovirus; a different virus and there isn’t a vaccine for that. So we’re talking about the respiratory illness, and that can come on very suddenly, you can be just fine one day and the next day at 4 o’clock in the morning you wake up and you have the influenza. Usually its symptoms are a high fever, very high 102 degrees for a couple of days, extreme fatigue, runny nose, body aches and chilling that goes along with that fever. A person is really quite ill and down in bed typically for five, six days.”

Fisher also reminds people to clean their hands regularly, cover their coughs, and contain illness by staying home when you’re sick, to help prevent the spread of illness.