Frequently Asked Questions

A workplace flu vaccination program is an onsite clinic where qualified nurse immunisers come to your office and vaccinate your staff during the workday.

It's the simple alternative to asking every employee to book their own GP or pharmacy appointment in March. We arrive with the vaccines, equipment, digital consent forms and observation kit, set up in a private room, and work through your team on a schedule that suits the business.

A typical clinic needs nothing from you beyond a room with privacy, a table, two chairs and a bin. Reporting to the Australian Immunisation Register happens within 24 hours of the clinic.

The reason it works is behaviour, not biology. Most people mean to get a flu shot every year and never get around to it. Removing the booking step lifts uptake from roughly a third of staff to most of the room.

For more detail, see our workplace flu vaccination program overview.

A corporate flu vaccination program runs in five steps: quote, scheduling, onsite clinic, vouchers for anyone who missed it, and AIR reporting.

You tell us your headcount and locations. We come back with pricing within one business day. You pick a date — early morning, lunch, after-hours, or rolling across multiple sites — and we work around the way your business already runs.

On the day, our nurse immunisers arrive 10-15 minutes early to set up the room, then vaccinate at roughly 30-32 people an hour per nurse. Digital consent happens on arrival, so no paper lands on your wellbeing team.

Each person is observed for 15 minutes after their shot, then back to work. Anyone who couldn't attend gets a pharmacy voucher redeemable across 2,000+ stores. Every vaccination is uploaded to the Australian Immunisation Register within 24 hours.

Most clinics under 100 staff finish inside half a day.

Every Corporate Care program includes vaccines, nurses, equipment, digital consent, 15-minute observation, AIR reporting and pharmacy vouchers for staff who miss the clinic.

Specifically:

• Registered Nurses with HESA-accredited Nurse Immuniser training — the people doing the actual vaccinating
• TGA-approved trivalent influenza vaccines sourced through approved Australian suppliers
• All clinical equipment, consumables and sharps disposal — we bring everything and leave the room as we found it
• Digital consent management via our own platform — no paper forms for your wellbeing team to chase
• 15-minute post-vaccination observation onsite
• Reporting to the Australian Immunisation Register within 24 hours of the clinic
• Flu vaccination vouchers for any staff who couldn't attend on the day
• A dedicated program coordinator from booking through to wrap-up

What sits outside the standard inclusions: branded marketing collateral, custom reporting integrations, or out-of-season clinics. We'll quote those on request if the program needs them.

A single nurse vaccinates 30-32 people an hour, so a 50-person clinic runs about 1 hour 45 minutes including rest breaks.

Working numbers:

• 50 staff → about 1 hour 45 minutes (single nurse)
• 100 staff → about 3 hours 15 minutes (single nurse)
• 200 staff → about 7 hours single-nurse, or half that with two nurses
• 500+ staff → multi-nurse, often split across the morning

Each person takes roughly two minutes start to finish — digital consent, the shot, a quick check. The 15-minute observation runs in the background while we keep vaccinating the next person. For sites bigger than 150-200 people we'll usually recommend two nurses so the queue doesn't stretch into the afternoon.

Most clients schedule the clinic against a natural break in the day — start of shift, lunch slot, or rolling 30-minute windows by team — so the work barely pauses.

For a single-site clinic with confirmed numbers, we can usually be onsite within 5-10 business days during the March-May peak season.

The bottleneck is rarely on our end. We hold vaccine stock from late February, run a national bench of 45 Nurse Immunisers, and our scheduling team can confirm a date the same day you sign off the quote. What does take time on your side: distributing the staff opt-in form, collecting numbers, and lining up a room.

Most clients move from first enquiry to clinic day in two to three weeks. Outside the peak (June onward, or pre-season in February) we can move faster — sometimes 48 hours for a small site.

Voucher programs are quicker again: once your numbers are confirmed, the voucher campaign can go live the same day. If you're running late in the season, get in touch and we'll work back from your preferred date.

Corporate Care uses TGA-approved influenza vaccines, with brand and formulation selected by cohort eligibility per the current ATAGI recommendation. All vaccines travel in the +2 °C to +8 °C cold chain at every step, per the Strive for 5 National Vaccine Storage Guidelines. See our flu vaccination page for the current season’s detail.

The trade-off is uptake versus reach: an onsite clinic vaccinates roughly twice as many staff as a voucher program, but vouchers cover staff a clinic can't reach.

When the clinic comes to the office, the friction drops to zero. Staff walk down the corridor, get the shot, walk back. Uptake on a well-promoted onsite clinic reaches a clear majority of the office, while voucher redemption runs lower because employees still have to make the time themselves.

Cost is similar on a per-shot basis at scale; what differs is the result. Most clients run both: an onsite clinic at the main site, and pharmacy vouchers for remote workers, leave-balance staff, regional offices or anyone who couldn't make the clinic day.

Mixing the two delivers the highest overall coverage, and it's the model behind the 100,000+ employees we've vaccinated in the last three years.

For workplaces under 10 staff, a pharmacy voucher program is usually cheaper and easier than an onsite clinic; we'll size the recommendation to your headcount.

The maths is straightforward. Onsite clinics carry a minimum clinic fee of $425 ex-GST to cover the nurse's time, travel and equipment regardless of how many people are vaccinated. Below about 10 staff, the per-person cost climbs sharply and a voucher program — where each employee redeems a code at any of our 2,000+ partner pharmacies — usually works out better value.

That said, we do run small onsite clinics when there's a good reason: a site that's hard to reach by pharmacy, executive teams who prefer the privacy of an onsite shot, or small offices co-located with larger sites we're already visiting that day.

Talk to us about your situation — for very small teams, flu vaccination vouchers are usually the answer.

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Corporate flu shots in Australia typically run between $30 and $45 per employee for onsite clinics, with the per-person rate dropping as your numbers go up.

Two things move the price: headcount and how many sites we visit. Onsite clinics carry a minimum clinic fee of $425 ex-GST to cover the nurse's time, travel, vaccines and equipment for the visit. Above that floor, the per-person cost scales down — a 50-person clinic and a 500-person clinic land at meaningfully different rates per shot.

Multi-site programs are quoted per location, with discounts when sites can be run on consecutive days. Pharmacy voucher programs are priced separately and usually work out a little cheaper per person, with no minimum fee.

Everything quoted is ex-GST, all-inclusive — vaccines, nurses, equipment, AIR reporting, observation, and pharmacy vouchers for staff who miss the clinic are all in the per-person rate. For a real number, request a quote and we'll come back within one business day.

Book in January or February for a clinic in late March, April or early May — that's the window where vaccination beats the seasonal peak.

Australian flu cases climb from June, peak between June and September, and tail off through spring. Immunity from the shot kicks in around two weeks after vaccination, so the practical window for an effective workplace clinic is late March through late May. April and the first half of May are the busiest weeks of the year for us.

Regular clients lock in dates from the previous October-November. If you're new to running a program, January-February gets you the dates you want; March bookings still work but the calendar narrows quickly. We can take bookings outside this window if you need a clinic for new starters or returning staff, but the seasonal cost-effectiveness is best inside it.

Pharmacy vouchers run on a longer window — they stay useful right through July.

Corporate Care covers every Australian state and territory, with nurse immunisers based in each major capital and travelling teams for regional centres.

Capital city coverage:

• Sydney workplace flu clinic: head office at Potts Point, full Greater Sydney coverage
• Melbourne workplace flu clinic: CBD, inner suburbs and outer Melbourne
• Brisbane workplace flu clinic: Brisbane CBD, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast
• Perth workplace flu clinic: Perth metro and Mandurah
• Adelaide workplace flu clinic: Adelaide metro and surrounds
• Canberra workplace flu clinic: ACT and Queanbeyan

Plus Hobart, Darwin and major regional centres. We also cover New Zealand workplace flu clinic work through local immunisation nurses for Australian clients with NZ sites. Multi-state programs are coordinated through one program manager, so you get one quote, one schedule and one reporting line regardless of how many cities the clinic runs across.

Yes — we cover regional and remote workplaces across Australia, either with travelling nurse teams for onsite clinics or pharmacy vouchers redeemable at 2,000+ stores nationwide.

Which one fits depends on staff density. If you've got 30 or more employees concentrated on one regional site, a travelling clinic is often the cleanest option: we send a nurse from the nearest capital or regional hub and run the clinic in a single day. Below that, or for genuinely remote workforces (mining, agriculture, multi-town distributions), pharmacy vouchers work better.

Our 2,000+ partner pharmacies include Chemist Warehouse, Priceline, TerryWhite and Blooms, with redemption locations in every regional centre and most country towns. Staff get a code, walk into any participating pharmacy, and get vaccinated at no cost to them.

The voucher cost still flows back to your program, so the budget stays predictable. Mixed programs — onsite in the main office, vouchers for remote staff — are common.

Flu vaccination vouchers are codes your employees redeem at any of 2,000+ partner pharmacies across Australia for a no-cost flu shot — useful for staff who can't make the onsite clinic.

The mechanic is simple. We issue a unique voucher to each employee — usually by email — and they walk into Chemist Warehouse, Priceline, TerryWhite, Blooms or any of the 2,000+ partner stores, hand over the code, and get vaccinated. There's nothing for them to pay at the counter.

Each voucher reports back to your program so you can see who used theirs and who didn't. We issue more than 40,000 vouchers across the last three years, so the pharmacy network is well-trodden and staff rarely have trouble finding a participating store.

Vouchers are particularly useful for: remote and hybrid staff, regional offices below clinic minimum size, anyone on leave during the clinic, and contractors or casuals whose schedules don't line up with the main onsite day.

Vouchers can be redeemed at any of 2,000+ partner pharmacies — Chemist Warehouse, Priceline, TerryWhite, Blooms and others — but not at non-partner stores.

The partner network covers every Australian capital, every major regional centre and most country towns, so for nearly all employees there's a participating pharmacy inside 10 minutes of home or work. Each voucher carries a unique code that the pharmacy scans at redemption — that's how the vaccination flows back into your program reporting and how we confirm payment with the pharmacy.

A voucher won't work at a non-partner pharmacy or at a GP clinic. If an employee tries to redeem somewhere we don't partner with, we direct them to the nearest participating store, which is rarely more than a few minutes further.

Vouchers are valid for the full Australian flu season (usually April through July) and we send a reminder a few weeks before expiry so unused vouchers don't go to waste.

Workplace flu vaccinations are generally tax deductible for Australian businesses as a workplace health expense, and FBT-exempt as a work-related medical service.

The Australian Tax Office treats flu vaccinations provided to employees at work as a work-related preventive health measure. That means the cost is typically claimable as a business deduction in the year it's incurred. On the fringe benefits tax side, work-related medical examinations and immunisations are FBT-exempt under section 58M of the FBTAA when provided to employees by the employer.

That covers both onsite clinics and voucher programs for the most part. We're not your accountant — for the specific treatment in your business structure (sole trader, company, trust, partnership), check with your tax adviser. Our invoices itemise the components — nurses, vaccines, vouchers, equipment — so your finance team has the line-by-line breakdown the ATO expects.

Most clients code workplace flu vaccinations to a workplace health and safety or employee benefits expense category.

Corporate Care invoices on standard 30-day terms after the clinic or voucher campaign, with one invoice covering all sites and services on the program.

Invoicing is consolidated. Whether you've booked a single 50-person clinic in Sydney or a 12-site multi-state program, you get one invoice with line items per site, per service. The invoice goes out within five business days of the final clinic or once a voucher campaign closes.

Payment terms are net-30 by default; longer terms are available for enterprise clients on request. We accept EFT, BPAY and credit card. Quotes are valid for 30 days and lock in the per-person rate at the volume you confirmed.

If your headcount changes meaningfully between quote and clinic, we'll re-quote rather than surprise you on the invoice. Multi-year programs can be invoiced in instalments — a holding invoice in February to confirm the booking, balance after the clinic. Talk to your program coordinator if you need a particular cost-centre split or PO number on the invoice.

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Corporate Care administers TGA-approved trivalent inactivated influenza vaccines (TIV), egg-based and injectable — the standard adult formulation across the Australian workplace.

Trivalent means the vaccine covers three strains: two influenza A subtypes (typically H1N1 and H3N2) and one influenza B lineage (Victoria). The B/Yamagata lineage that used to be the fourth strain hasn't been detected in global circulation since 2020, so the World Health Organization dropped it and the Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee accepted that recommendation from the 2024 season onwards.

Every seasonal flu vaccine available in Australia from 2026 is trivalent. For workplace adult clinics we administer the standard adult dose, egg-based and inactivated; brands available in our supply include Fluzone, Influvac and Vaxigrip.

Clinical practice follows the Australian Immunisation Handbook influenza chapter.

The 2026 Australian flu vaccine is trivalent because the B/Yamagata strain that made earlier vaccines quadrivalent hasn't circulated in the global population since 2020.

The story is short. Up to 2023, most Australian flu vaccines were quadrivalent: two influenza A subtypes plus two influenza B lineages (Victoria and Yamagata). Through 2020, the COVID-era public health measures appeared to extinguish the B/Yamagata lineage from circulation worldwide — no confirmed cases since March 2020.

The Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee and the World Health Organization both recommended removing the Yamagata component, on the basis that including a strain no longer circulating offered no benefit and consumed manufacturing capacity. The Therapeutic Goods Administration accepted that recommendation, and from 2024 onwards Australian flu vaccines have transitioned to trivalent.

By 2026, every flu vaccine registered in Australia is trivalent. The clinical effectiveness is unchanged for the strains still circulating, which is what matters for protection.

The most common side effects of the flu vaccine are a sore arm, mild fatigue or a low-grade fever for 24-48 hours — none requiring medical attention.

The Australian Immunisation Handbook records the following expected reactions for standard-dose inactivated flu vaccines:

• Local reactions (sore arm, redness, mild swelling at the injection site): more than 10% of recipients, resolving within 1-2 days
• Systemic reactions (mild fever, malaise, muscle aches, tiredness): 1-10% of recipients, resolving within 1-2 days
• Serious allergic reactions (anaphylaxis): very rare, around 1 in a million doses
• Guillain-Barré syndrome: the same one-in-a-million order of magnitude (and roughly 15 times more common after actual influenza infection than after vaccination)

The adjuvanted Fluad vaccine used in over-65s has a slightly higher local reaction rate (~30% vs ~20% standard dose), and the High-Dose vaccine for over-65s carries marginally more local reactions, mostly mild. Anyone experiencing an unexpected reaction should report it to the Therapeutic Goods Administration through the TGA's online reporting form or by phone — the report contributes to the national safety monitoring picture.

Only two groups have an absolute contraindication to the inactivated flu vaccine: anyone who's had anaphylaxis to a previous flu vaccine, or anaphylaxis to any vaccine component.

That's it. The Australian Immunisation Handbook lists no other absolute contraindications for the standard inactivated injectable formulation Corporate Care administers. People with current febrile illness (over 38.5°C) are usually advised to defer until they've recovered — that's a precaution, not a contraindication. Egg allergy, including a history of anaphylaxis to egg, is not a contraindication.

All current Australian flu vaccines contain less than 1 microgram of ovalbumin per dose, and the Handbook explicitly states that people with severe egg allergy can receive a full age-appropriate dose.

The intranasal live-attenuated FluMist vaccine has additional contraindications (moderate-severe immunocompromise, aspirin therapy in under-18s), but Corporate Care doesn't administer FluMist. If you're unsure about a particular employee's situation, that's a conversation for their GP, not for the clinic floor.

Yes — the inactivated flu vaccine is safe at any stage of pregnancy and during breastfeeding, and the Australian Immunisation Handbook actively recommends it.

The recommendation isn't passive. Pregnant women are categorised as a priority group under the National Immunisation Program and the vaccine is NIP-funded for that reason. Two clinical reasons sit behind it: first, pregnancy itself increases the risk of severe flu complications because of changes in immune function and lung capacity; second, antibodies pass to the baby through the placenta and provide protection through the newborn's first six months of life, before the baby can be vaccinated directly.

Each pregnancy is treated as a separate vaccination event — protection doesn't carry over between pregnancies, so revaccinating in each one is appropriate.

The Handbook recommends the inactivated injectable formulation specifically (the same one Corporate Care administers), not the intranasal live-attenuated FluMist. Workplace clinics regularly vaccinate pregnant employees with no special process beyond the standard consent and observation.

Yes — people with egg allergy, including those with a history of anaphylaxis to egg, can receive the standard flu vaccine at a workplace clinic with no special precautions.

This used to be a more cautious area, but the evidence shifted years ago. The Australian Immunisation Handbook is explicit: egg allergy of any severity is not a contraindication to the inactivated injectable flu vaccine. The reason is the ovalbumin content.

Australian flu vaccines typically contain less than 1 microgram of ovalbumin per dose, well below the threshold at which an allergic response would be expected, even in people with anaphylactic egg allergy. People with significant anxiety about egg allergy may be offered a longer observation window (30 minutes rather than the standard 15), but the vaccine itself is the same and the dose is the same.

The cell-based vaccine Flucelvax — manufactured without eggs — is available in Australia but is not part of Corporate Care's workplace delivery model.

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Yes — every nurse Corporate Care sends to a workplace is an AHPRA-registered Registered Nurse with HESA-accredited Nurse Immuniser training.

That's the only model. To work as a nurse in Australia you have to be AHPRA-registered — it's the national regulator under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. We don't deploy Enrolled Nurses, Assistants in Nursing or other roles to administer vaccinations; the regulatory scope of practice and standing-order frameworks across the states don't support that model for independent workplace immunisation.

The Nurse Immuniser training is the more meaningful credential for what we actually do — it's the topic-specific qualification delivered by the Health Education Services Australia (HESA) program, covering vaccine administration, cold chain, adverse event management and consent.

Our national bench is 45 Nurse Immunisers covering every Australian state and territory. Our Founder & Chief Nurse Consultant Aitor Aspiazu (AHPRA NMW0001159845) is a Registered Nurse who led the development of our clinical and program-management systems since the business launched in 2011.

Every Corporate Care nurse immuniser completes HESA-accredited Nurse Immuniser training plus annual currency in anaphylaxis management, cold chain handling and consent.

The base requirement is the HESA Nurse Immuniser course, the nationally recognised program covering vaccine pharmacology, administration technique, cold chain handling, consent and capacity assessment, contraindications and post-vaccination management. Most of our nurses come to us with several years of clinical experience already; the immuniser qualification is the layer that sits on top.

Beyond that, our nurses maintain annual currency in anaphylaxis management — adrenaline administration, recognition and emergency response — as part of their ongoing immuniser practice. Every nurse on the bench refreshes the National Vaccine Storage Guidelines, basic life support, and the latest Australian Immunisation Handbook updates each season.

The Handbook is the canonical clinical reference: it's the document our nurses work from on the floor. We also run internal calibration sessions before each season covering the year's vaccine formulation, any updates to ATAGI guidance, and process refreshers on consent and AIR reporting workflows.

Yes — every vaccination Corporate Care administers is uploaded to the Australian Immunisation Register within 24 hours of the clinic, as required since March 2021.

AIR reporting has been mandatory for all vaccination providers since 1 March 2021 under the Australian Immunisation Register Act. Every dose we give — onsite clinic or pharmacy voucher — flows into AIR against the individual's Medicare number (or AIR-only record if they're not on Medicare).

For your employees, the practical benefit is that the vaccination shows up in their My Health Record and their immunisation history statement is updated automatically. They can pull a record from the AIR through their Medicare account any time they need proof of vaccination, whether for international travel, a healthcare role, or a personal record.

Our reporting flow runs through our in-house clinical platform: the nurse confirms the dose at the time of administration, and the AIR upload batches that night. Aggregate reporting back to your program manager happens within five business days of the clinic.

Corporate Care collects digital consent on arrival at the clinic — no paper, no pre-clinic forms for your wellbeing team to chase, and full Australian Privacy Act compliance.

Consent runs through our own digital platform on a tablet at the clinic. When an employee arrives for their shot, they work through the screening questions — medical history, current medications, allergies, contraindications — and confirm consent before the nurse administers the vaccine. The whole process takes about 90 seconds and is built so the screening logic catches the things that matter (anaphylaxis history, current febrile illness, pregnancy stage where relevant) without overwhelming people with irrelevant questions.

The nurse reviews each consent in real time. Data is stored encrypted, accessible only to the clinical team that needs it, and retained for the period required under the Australian Privacy Principles.

Employees can request access to their own record at any time. Nothing about an individual's health information goes back to your wellbeing team beyond a non-identifying attendance count.

Yes — Corporate Care complies with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and individual vaccination data is never shared with your wellbeing team.

What you receive after a clinic is an attendance report: how many people were vaccinated, broken down by clinic if you ran multiple sites. What you don't receive: who attended, what their consent screening showed, who declined, or any individual clinical data.

That's a hard line in the Privacy Act for health information — employee health data is sensitive personal information and the employer is not entitled to it. Each employee owns their own vaccination record and can access it directly through the Australian Immunisation Register via their Medicare account.

Internally, vaccination records are stored encrypted and accessible only to the clinical team that needs them for safe practice. We also operate under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme — if there were ever a data security incident affecting your staff, you'd be notified through the channels the scheme requires.

Yes — Corporate Care carries professional indemnity and public liability insurance covering all workplace clinics and pharmacy voucher programs nationally.

The cover is sized for the scale of work we do — more than 100,000 employees vaccinated across Australia and New Zealand over the last three years. Both professional indemnity (covering clinical practice claims) and public liability (covering general workplace incidents during the clinic) are maintained continuously, with certificates of currency available to procurement teams on request.

Each Registered Nurse on our roster carries individual professional indemnity insurance, mandated by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia as a condition of nurse registration. For procurement teams running a vendor onboarding process, the standard pack we provide includes the insurance certificate, registration details for the named nurses on your clinic, the Privacy Act compliance statement, AIR reporting workflow, and a sample consent record.

Most procurement reviews finish in a single round once that pack is in front of them.

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You'll walk into the clinic room, complete a brief digital consent on a tablet, get the vaccination from a Registered Nurse, then wait 15 minutes before heading back to work.

The whole thing takes about 20 minutes from when you walk in to when you walk out. On arrival, the nurse will hand you a tablet for the consent screening — name, date of birth, a short medical history (allergies, current medications, pregnancy stage if relevant).

The nurse reviews your answers, asks any clarifying questions, and then administers the shot in your upper arm. The injection itself takes a few seconds.

You'll then sit in the observation area for 15 minutes — this is the window where serious reactions, which are very rare, would appear. Most people use the time to check email. After 15 minutes you're free to head back to your desk.

Bring a short-sleeved shirt or one you can roll up easily.

The injection itself takes a few seconds; the full process — consent, vaccination, observation — runs about 20 minutes from when you walk into the clinic room.

Breaking it down: the digital consent screening on the tablet takes around 90 seconds for most people. The nurse reviews your answers and confirms you're good to proceed, another minute or so. The vaccination is administered in the upper arm and takes only a few seconds; most people don't have a strong sensation either way.

Then there's a 15-minute observation period in the clinic room before you head back to work. The 15 minutes is the standard window required after any vaccination — it's when serious reactions (which are very rare) would appear, so the nurse is on hand if anything unexpected happens.

From a wellbeing-team planning perspective, that means staff are away from their desks for about 20 minutes total per person, which is why we recommend rolling 30-minute time slots when scheduling the clinic.

If you can't make the workplace clinic, ask your wellbeing team about a pharmacy voucher — it lets you get the same flu shot at any of 2,000+ partner pharmacies at no cost.

Most Corporate Care programs include vouchers as a backup for exactly this situation. The voucher arrives by email, contains a unique code, and you redeem it at any participating Chemist Warehouse, Priceline, TerryWhite, Blooms or other partner pharmacy. You pay nothing at the counter — the voucher covers the cost.

If your program doesn't already include vouchers, your wellbeing team can usually add them with a short call to us. Other options worth knowing about: most workplaces will be running multiple clinic dates across the season, so you may be able to slot into a later one; some clients also run a second smaller catch-up clinic later in April or May.

The worst answer is to skip vaccination entirely and rely on getting it done at your GP — most people who plan that don't get around to it.

Most workplace clinics are staff-only by default, but some employers extend the program to include partners and family — check with your wellbeing team first.

The default scope of a Corporate Care workplace clinic is the employees of the organisation paying for it. That's how the budget and the consent paperwork are set up. Some employers actively extend the program to cover spouses, partners and dependants as a broader workplace benefit, and we'll run that alongside the staff clinic when the client opts in.

Where that's not part of the program, family members typically need to be vaccinated separately. The two easiest routes for them: a GP appointment (often bulk-billed depending on the practice), or one of the 2,000+ partner pharmacies that offer flu vaccinations for a small over-the-counter fee.

Pregnant partners, children under five and over-65s are NIP-funded, so they can get the flu vaccine free through a GP regardless of any workplace program.

The flu vaccine takes about two weeks after the shot to build full protection — that's why workplace clinics run in late March through May, before the June peak.

What happens in those two weeks: your immune system reads the inactivated vaccine, recognises the surface proteins of the three influenza strains it contains, and builds antibodies ready to respond if you encounter the real virus later in the season. The response builds gradually over 10-14 days and peaks around two weeks post-vaccination.

Protection then lasts the full Australian flu season — typically June through September — and tails off gradually. By the next season, the circulating strains have usually shifted enough that last year's vaccine doesn't cover them well, which is why annual revaccination matters.

If you get the shot in early April, you're fully protected by mid-April and good for the whole season ahead. If you delay to June, you're catching up to the season already starting around you.

Feeling slightly off for 24-48 hours after a flu shot is a normal immune response, not the flu itself — the vaccine can't give you flu because it contains no live virus.

The vaccine Corporate Care administers is inactivated: the influenza virus has been killed in manufacturing, leaving only the surface proteins your immune system needs to recognise. There's nothing in the vial that can replicate or cause an actual infection.

What people sometimes feel — a low-grade fever, mild fatigue, muscle aches, a sore arm — is the immune system responding to the vaccine and building protection. It's the same general kind of response your body would mount against an actual infection, just much milder and shorter.

Symptoms usually resolve within 1-2 days. Some people get nothing at all and don't even notice the next morning; the variation is normal. If symptoms last more than two days, are severe, or are accompanied by symptoms that look more like an unrelated illness, see a GP.

That's a separate event from the vaccine.

In Australia, flu vaccinations are available from late March through to the end of the flu season in October, with most workplace clinics running between late March and late May.

The seasonal vaccine becomes available once each year's formulation has been tested and approved, usually arriving with providers in February-March. Most workplace clinics run between late March and late May — that's the window where vaccinating before the June-September peak makes the most clinical sense.

If your employer is running a clinic, that's the easiest route — check with your wellbeing team for the date, or look for the workplace email when it goes out. If you've missed the workplace clinic, the same vaccine is available year-round at GPs and at most pharmacies (a small over-the-counter fee for adults outside the NIP-funded groups).

Pregnant women, children under five, over-65s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and people with chronic conditions can get the vaccine free through the National Immunisation Program via a GP.