Bad flu season colliding with Covid-19 could be overwhelmingDoctors and health officials are urging Americans to get vaccinated against influenza in record numbers this fall to avoid a dreaded scenario: flu colliding with a raging
coronavirus pandemic.
They worry that tens of millions of flu-related illnesses could overwhelm hospitals, doctor offices and laboratories that test for both respiratory illnesses. Symptoms of flu and covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, are similar.
“When someone presents to a physician with fever, cough, malaise, unless it’s one of the few things peculiar to covid-19, like a loss of smell, it’s hard to tell them apart when both are circulating in the community,” said Benjamin D. Singer, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a pulmonary critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
But the months ahead don’t have to be so difficult. If people follow social distancing measures and wear masks, those measures will limit transmission of covid-19 — and control influenza. Both viruses spread mainly through person-to-person respiratory droplets when a sick person coughs, sneezes or talks.
“This fall and winter could be one of the most complicated public health times we have, with the two coming at the same time,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent interview on the JAMA network.
“On the other hand, I’m an optimist. If the American public heeds the advice that we said about face covering and the social distancing and the hand-washing and being smart about crowds, this could be one of the best flu seasons we have had,” Redfield said. “And particularly if they do one more thing, and that is to embrace the flu vaccine with confidence.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-flu-season-collide/2020/09/04/23254d68-eb98-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html