You should stay at home for two weeks after receiving the flu vaccine.
This is exaggerated. Only children who have been vaccinated with the flu vaccine nasal spray should avoid close contact with people who have severely weakened immune systems for two weeks.
A post claiming that people who have received the flu vaccine should stay home for two weeks has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook.
It is based on the idea that recently vaccinated people can spread the flu to others. This is largely incorrect.
The majority of flu vaccines are injected and contain an inactive strain of the virus so cannot give the flu to the person receiving the injection or anyone they come into contact with.
The only case where this is slightly true is with nasal flu vaccines and immunocompromised people; people with severely weakened immune systems are recommended to avoid close contact with children who have received the spray, as it contains an active strain. The spray poses no risk to healthy individuals.
Despite this, immunocompromised people are encouraged to get an inactive version of the vaccine.
You can read more about vaccine exposure here.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false as the flu vaccine is not contagious in most circumstances.
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