How to differentiate Covid from the common flu, despite increasingly similar symptoms

“Covid can have all kinds of symptoms. It can range from having no symptoms at all to having some very similar symptoms,” explains Salvador Piero, a public health specialist and pharmacoepidemiologist at Fisabio, a biomedical research institution in Brazil. for influenza symptoms. Spain, to BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish-language news service.

“Right now we’re seeing more dry coughs and fewer problems with a loss of smell, although there are cases as well. Likewise, anything from mucus in the nose and something like a very severe cold with fever, can cause a lot of weakness, generally poor condition and fatigue and headaches. It varies a lot from person to person.”

In general, Covid develops a typical picture of respiratory viruses, with some specificity in some cases, especially when patients have problems with loss of taste or smell. But these symptoms are only present in between 20 and 25% of cases of the virus today, according to Piero.

“(Covid) is indistinguishable from any other respiratory virus. In fact, if antigen or PCR tests are not done, we will not know what the virus is. In some cases, there is diarrhea, which sometimes also appears in influenza. General, at the moment, if there is a respiratory condition, the most reasonable thing is to think that it is Covid.”

According to the specialist, the vast majority of people infected with the Covid virus do not know this or only realize it when they go to the hospital for a scheduled operation.

“In fact, between 20 and 25% of people have no symptoms. Others have very mild symptoms, such as a runny nose and a slight sore throat, which could be wrongly considered an allergy or something else, but their tests are positive. Covid simulates almost any condition, although at the moment, almost everything that comes from these non-specific symptoms is usually Covid disease.”

This is the opinion of Quique Bassat, an epidemiologist and researcher at Icrea (the Catalan Institute for Advanced Research) at the Institute for Global Health in Barcelona, ​​a center run by the “La Caixa” Foundation.

“Mild cases are not easy to diagnose. Symptoms are very non-specific. Only if you do a test, to be able to identify it. Previously it was very easy because it was almost mandatory to get tested. Everyone was worried to find out if she had, for fear of getting sick. dangerous, which prompted him to request diagnostic confirmation.

“Now, there’s no political or social pressure to do that, or personal pressure, because you don’t care if it’s the flu or coronavirus, if you don’t risk dying,” Bassat says.

What still distinguishes Covid from other respiratory viruses is the rate of infection.

The expert explains that the coronavirus is transmitted much faster than the flu. And that, at a dinner with 15 people, one of them had one of the new variants of Covid disease, maybe 13 or 14 people who might end up infected. Indeed, when dealing with a patient with influenza, the likelihood is that the two closest people will be infected.

“I’m a lot simpler, but it’s one of the biggest dangers of coronavirus. It’s spreading faster,” warns Basat.

Although many people are currently passing through Covid disease without major problems because they have been vaccinated or have had the disease before, others continue to develop severe symptoms and end up in the hospital.

“The truth is we have it all. We have many people who are asymptomatic, who have mild symptoms, people who have a flu-like picture, and people who keep getting pneumonia.

“In general, severe cases are associated with age and some previous diseases. But, in principle, the picture is much milder in these new variants than in any other wave,” notes Piero.

However, experts point out that the flu can be dangerous for the most vulnerable, which is also true of the coronavirus.

“Influenza is a very variable scale. We have more ‘quiet’ flu years that cause, say, 4,000 or 5,000 deaths in Spain. But we also have ‘bad’ years, with 15,000 or 20,000 deaths,” he explains.

The expert points out that the flu is as harmless as we sometimes think.

“Covid is not the case, especially in the elderly or the most vulnerable. For the very young, perhaps like the flu, the risks are very low. But the elderly should not take it as a normal thing,” he warns.

“Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the number of infected is so great that although the serious cases, for the ones that are, are not many, when there are a lot of infections, there are many serious cases. We see in hospitals and intensive care units. (ICUs). Although the disease is less serious, there are many infected and many people who need hospitalization.”

In this way, the most vulnerable must continue to protect themselves, as is the case with influenza.

“Influenza kills the vulnerable, it doesn’t kill healthy people. And influenza is primarily a problem for the chronically ill and those over 65. That’s why this population is vaccinated.”

“When all these communication efforts were made to try to ‘flu’ the virus, the idea was to send the same message: that we only have to worry about the most vulnerable, because they are the ones who would still be at risk even if they were vaccinated. They are currently dying in hospitals,” Bassett notes.

Although the cases we see now are mostly benign of the upper respiratory tract, nothing serious and have flu or cold-like symptoms, this is due not only to new variants of the virus, but also to vaccines, experts explain.

“The virus is now very benign, but because of our vaccination. The virus has changed too, but we can feel more comfortable because when we are vaccinated, we no longer see such serious cases around us,” Basat says.

“The crux of the matter is not whether or not Covid is like influenza. All the variants are different from the others. The gist of the matter is that we have been vaccinated. That changes the perspective. Which of the new variants can cause a serious condition. Among the unvaccinated. There is a very high rate of The vaccinated population and so appears to be benign.”

Covid will continue to mutate and we will continue to have waves of this disease, at least for a while.

“We have more and more infections,” Peiró says. “The new variants easily escape the immunity that the coronavirus left with another variant. That means the waves are not going down.”

In principle, experts hope that the new variants will not be more serious, but it is difficult to tell.

“Severe variants may exist, although it is thought to be less dangerous. Largely because the population will become increasingly infected, they will have immunity to infection with the virus or to getting two, three or four doses of the vaccine.

“However, there is no rule that says variables are becoming less severe. There is a rule that says we are getting more and more immunized. The population is more protected,” says Piero.

The specialist adds: “Vaccines continue to work amazingly well to prevent serious cases of Covid-19 disease, with a rate of between 85% and 90%, according to various studies. This ends up preventing the dangerous development of the condition and people end up in the hospital.”

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