By Kayla Loveless, Staff Writer
You let out a cough, and your throat is suddenly dry. Your skin is burning, and to your horror, the thermometer shows you’re running a fever. Now what? These days, you don’t know whether it’s COVID-19, just another strand of the flu, or something else.
Both COVID-19 and the flu are highly contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by completely different viruses. COVID-19 is caused by a newly discovered virus in 2019, while the flu is caused by differing influenza viruses that have been around for centuries.
They share a number of symptoms, including a fever, runny nose, shortness of breath and sore throat. Sophomore Khloe Tucker struggled with these symptoms in late 2020.
“I had all the symptoms: I was coughing, I threw up and I had a fever. I had to do a (COVID test) at home,” Tucker said. “I couldn’t breathe, I had to cough until it got to the point where I could breathe again.”
That COVID test Tucker took came back negative, so in her case, all those symptoms were being caused by something else.
Mistaking the flu for COVID has become a common issue since March 2020. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people receive a COVID-19 test when presenting any form of flu or COVID-19 symptoms to confirm a diagnosis. While the process of flu and COVID-19 testing may seem confusing, Dr. John Sanchez of The Outer Banks Hospital Urgent Care & Family Medicine in Nags Head explained the process.
“Almost all cases of suspected COVID-19 were tested for the flu as well to help tease out the cause of infection,” Sanchez said. “Through testing, the number of reported cases of the flu last season was close to zero.”
With the latest flu season right around the corner, things have changed drastically over the past 10 months due to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, although breakthrough cases remain possible even for those who have been vaccinated.
The question now is what will this flu season look like as people begin to experience shared symptoms between COVID and the flu such as coughing, difficulty breathing, muscle pain, headache, etc. Additional COVID symptoms include loss of taste and/or smell, but even those symptoms can be seen in many respiratory illnesses.
Illnesses such as colds, flu and COVID that are spread by airborne transmission can be prevented with social distancing, but research shows that only 18 percent of Americans are still practicing social distancing compared to 38 percent in March. Forty-seven percent of Americans say they have not attempted social distancing in the past month.
So what does that mean for this year’s flu season?
“There were close to zero reported cases of the flu last year, on both local and national levels,” Sanchez said. “I think masking and social distancing had a lot to do with that, so we shall see.”
Sophomore Kayla Loveless can be reached at [email protected].
