As flu season approaches amid the emergence of new COVID-19 variants, experts say it’s very difficult to differentiate between a cold, flu or COVID-19 infection, and no matter what an inflamed wearer has, Canadians deserve to wear a mask and physically distance themselves from others to stay safe.
“Many of these illnesses have overlapping symptoms. . . like a runny nose, sore throat, general pain, fatigue and cough. . . those are characteristic of everyone,” said Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital. globalnewsarray
“It’s going to be very difficult to permanently separate a cold, a flu and COVID-19. “
Canada typically arrives at the start of flu season from last October to early January, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told Global News in May.
Bogoch says that if a user doesn’t feel well, they stay home.
“You don’t need to get sick anymore. . . we know how transmissible COVID-19 is and you shouldn’t go to an office or school to pass it on to others,” Bopassch said.
“One of the things as flu season gets closer is that other people want to get vaccinated, whether it’s getting a flu shot or catching up on their COVID vaccines,” he told reporters Monday.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) also “strongly” recommends that bivalent COVID-19 vaccines be administered as boosters this fall compared to the original vaccines, which vaccine brands have modified to better target the ever-evolving virus. At the same time, some pharmacies have opened their online portals for Canadians to get a flu shot when it becomes available in their respective regions.
While there’s no express way to differentiate between flu, cold, or COVID based on symptoms alone, Bogoch says immediate COVID-19 testing can still be helpful, at least in the first five to 10 days after infection.
“That’s a pretty decent indicator. . . We do not wish to infect others. It’s anything we can prevent,” Bogoch said, adding that even if a user tests negative, they still want to take their symptoms seriously.
However, Dr. Earl Rubin, director of the infectious diseases department at Montreal Children’s Hospital, says other people want to understand the limitations of an immediate test.
“An immediate negative check on someone who has no symptoms is not helpful. If your symptoms started just a few hours earlier, it may take two or three days for immediate monitoring to test positive,” Rubin said.
He said about 25% of COVID-19 cases never tested positive, but “a positive check is really helpful. “
“We would like other people to exclude themselves for five days, pay attention to other vulnerable people and wear masks,” Rubin said.
He says there are a lot of respiratory viruses circulating lately. One of them is respiratory syncytial virus or RSV.
“It’s very difficult to differentiate RSV from COVID or any of the respiratory viruses, because with the new variants, Omicron, in particular, the symptoms look more like an upper respiratory infection. Runny nose, sore throat, stuffy nose, cough, things that everyone before COVID knows very well in terms of viral illness,” Rubin said.
He says the only thing that helps to know what you’re inflamed with is if a known touch has tested positive for COVID. This, in a way, eliminates the option of a flu or a cold.
“We’ll see what the weather brings in terms of flu, which can also give that high fever and (do it) with health issues for several days similar to COVID. Right now, we don’t have much of the flu. Anyway, not yet, but we hope it comes. So, it’s very hard to tell the difference,” Rubin said.
He says what also makes differentiation complicated for doctors is the fact that more young people have health problems in recent years and have severe symptoms of non-unusual viruses like RSV.
During the pandemic, Rubin says, other people wore masks, moved and worked from home so children wouldn’t become infected with common viruses and, as a result, now lack immunity.
“Fortunately. . . healthy young people don’t have as bad health with COVID, but they can have the same health with the flu,” Rubin said. “We also found that young people are not immune to (common viruses) because they haven’t been hired in recent years. “
Dr. Rod Lim, site head of the children’s hospital’s pediatric emergency department, previously told Global News that “it’s going to be a difficult season” with the possibility of children getting sick.
“We know that young people have been housed for two or two and a half years, so the sensitivity of the population is very high and the combined has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels. Therefore, we anticipate that it will be quite a difficult season. “” he said.
Lim added that respiratory viruses also don’t adhere to old time trends, meaning fitness personnel don’t know when the flu will hit and whether it will adapt to other viruses that might be circulating, such as COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
“All of this makes it clinically very complicated to look at and say, it’s COVID or whatever,” Rubin said.
He said young people get a COVID checkup if they can, and if they have health problems and have symptoms, they stay home.
“If you take a COVID test and it continually comes back negative, then kids at school or anyone in the network deserve to wear masks,” Rubin said. “(Masks) are really important. . . this will not only help restrict the spread of COVID, however, the other respiratory viruses that are also there.
– with archives through Matthew Trevithick and Aaron D’Andrea