- Influenza, COVID, RSV, and many other seasonal diseases are rampant.
- Although many have overlapping symptoms, there are several ways to distinguish between different diseases.
- If you have a fever and a headache and cough, your doctor may recommend getting tested for flu and COVID.
America is sick. federal health data indicates that the country is currently in a heatwave, with lots of fever, sore throats and coughs rushing from coast to coast.
Influenza is the most common disease in the world today. waste water Surveillance also suggests that COVID is trending upward after Thanksgiving, RSV — has sent babies and toddlers to emergency care for months — and is still widely distributed.
But there are many other illnesses besides the “triple epidemic” of influenza, COVID, and RSV contributing to this year’s ominous, earlier-than-usual seasonal onslaught.
“There’s a lot of viral junk out there,” says infectious disease expert Dr. William SchaffnerA doctor from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine told Insider.
Here are some of the most common causes today, according to infectious disease experts who conduct virus tests at major medical centers across the country, as well as federal disease monitors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other than guessing based on prevalence, it’s not so easy to pinpoint exactly which disease made you sick.
“Fever, muscle aches, cough, headache, these are common,” Dr. Roy Garrick, director of infectious diseases at New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, told Insider. “The difference between the flu and COVID. I really don’t understand.”
However, there are some prominent symptoms that help distinguish one disease from another. Paying attention to how quickly your illness progresses and which symptoms are most prominent can help you make an educated determination of which seasonal illness you have.
If you think you might have the flu or COVID, it’s worth getting tested. Antiviral treatment is available if the infection is detected early. This can also shorten the course of infection and alleviate symptoms.
“If you have a fever or a cough or a headache, you should get tested for both flu and COVID,” Glick said. especially important. “It needs to be seen, treated and diagnosed early.”
But if your illness isn’t the flu or the novel coronavirus, there’s often not much to do other than wait for your immune system to finish fighting and staying as comfortable and healthy as possible.
“Knowing it’s RSV doesn’t change anything we do,” said Manuela Murray, a pediatrician and medical director of the Pediatric Emergency Care Center at the University of Texas Medical School, Insider. “We don’t have drugs that really help.”
The same is true for many other viruses. In most cases, the doctor’s advice is to rest, stay hydrated, and take pain relievers and fever reducers to relieve the pain.