WASHINGTON: The White House COVID response coordinator urged Americans to get their flu vaccines and updated COVID-19 boosters on Thursday, saying there has been a significant rise in COVID cases in the last couple of weeks.

"There's still a lot of flu and then COVID numbers are rising pretty significantly over the last couple of weeks," Ashish Jha said in an interview with CNN.

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"If people go out and get their flu vaccine, if people go out and get their updated COVID vaccines, things will be much better. Obviously, if that doesn't happen, then there's more concern and more risk out there."