If You Et the Flue Can You Get It Again
(CNN)As doctors worry about a coronavirus-and-flu "twin-demic" that could overwhelm the health intendance system, Americans must argue with another possibility: fighting both viruses at the same time.
"You can certainly get both the influenza and Covid-19 at the same time, which could be catastrophic to your immune system," said Dr. Adrian Burrowes, a family medicine physician in Florida.
In fact, getting infected with one tin make y'all more than vulnerable to getting ill with the other, epidemiologist Dr. Seema Yasmin said.
"One time yous become infected with the influenza and some other respiratory viruses, it weakens your trunk," said Yasmin, director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative.
"Your defenses go down, and it makes you vulnerable to getting a 2d infection on top of that."
On their own, both Covid-19 and the flu can set on the lungs, potentially causing pneumonia, fluid in the lungs or respiratory failure, the Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention said.
Having both disease simultaneously "would increase the chance of longer-term effects of whatever of those organ systems," said Dr. Michael Matthay, a professor of medicine and a critical care specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
But it's also early on to know exactly how much worse that double whammy could be, compared to having each virus on its own.
That's considering Covid-19 didn't spread across the US until most the end of the last influenza season, Matthay said. So there's non a lot of data yet on people who get both illnesses at the aforementioned time.
But Matthay suspects the potential for pneumonia would exist greater if the body is infected with both the influenza and coronavirus.
"The two (viruses) together definitely could be more injurious to the lungs and cause more respiratory failure," he said.
Respiratory failure doesn't necessarily mean your lungs stop working. It ways the lungs tin't go plenty oxygen into the blood.
"Acute respiratory failure tin can be a life-threatening emergency," the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says. "Respiratory failure may cause damage to your lungs and other organs, and then it is important to get treated quickly."
How can I tell if I take Covid-nineteen or the flu (or both)?
"Symptoms of influenza and Covid-19 are pretty similar, so it'southward hard to distinguish the 2," said Dr. Leonard Mermel, medical director for the Department of Epidemiology and Infection Control at Rhode Island Hospital.
Both the flu and Covid-nineteen can give you a fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, sore throat, trunk aches and a runny or stuffy nose, the CDC said.
"Some people may have airsickness and diarrhea, though this is more than common in children than adults," the CDC said.
Merely unlike the flu, Covid-19 can crusade a loss of taste or smell.
So the best way to know if you have the novel coronavirus or the flu (or both) is to become tested.
The CDC has created a test that will check for both viruses, to exist used at CDC-supported public health labs. The agency said it is continuing to manufacture and distribute these tests.
How can I avoid this influenza-Covid-nineteen double whammy?
Wear a mask and proceed physical distancing. Wellness officials have stressed the importance of masks and physical distancing if Americans want to control Covid-19 -- and get the economic system back on track.
With the imminent flu season, such precautions can "doubly protect us from both of those viruses," Yasmin said.
In the Southern Hemisphere, which is merely ending its winter months and flu season, several countries have reported astonishingly low flu numbers as people wear masks and social distance.
In Australia, for case, the number of lab-confirmed flu cases plummeted from 61,000 in August 2022 to 107 cases this August.
Only in the US, some people are getting lax nigh mask wearing and social distancing. And that'southward a big trouble, said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
She said in that location could be a "perfect storm of accelerated Covid-19 action, as people assemble more -- within, in item -- as they get continually fatigued with the mask wearing, the social distancing and the hand hygiene, and equally they are exposed to seasonal influenza."
Go a flu vaccine. This may sound obvious. Yet about half of all Americans don't get vaccinated against the flu, including most children who die from the flu.
Even if you go a flu shot and still take hold of the influenza later, the symptoms are usually less astringent than if you got no flu vaccine at all.
And since no Covid-xix vaccine is publicly bachelor notwithstanding, the flu shot is the only mode y'all can assist inoculate yourself confronting having both viruses at the aforementioned fourth dimension.
Pediatricians say information technology's important for children 6 months and older to get the flu vaccine, ideally before the end of October. "Timely influenza vaccination is especially of import" this flu season, the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote this week.
Getting a flu shot can too help many more people than just yourself, said immunologist Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association.
"Since hospitals and doctors' offices are going to be very busy caring for Covid-19 patients, a flu vaccine tin aid decrease burdens on the health intendance system and brand sure that those who need medical care are able to get information technology," Bailey said.
Nearly 140,000 to 810,000 Americans get hospitalized with the flu each year, according to the CDC. And the number of Covid-nineteen hospitalizations are expected to surge more than 150% betwixt now and December ane, according to the Academy of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
"Every year, many patients get severe influenza with respiratory failure," Matthay said. Amid patients who get astringent pneumonia from the flu, "the vast majority of those patients have not had their flu vaccine that yr."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/11/health/covid-flu-together-health-impact/index.html
0 Response to "If You Et the Flue Can You Get It Again"
Post a Comment