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What Is Flurona, Coronavirus Combined With Flu: 3 Things To Know About Double Infection

What Is Flurona, Coronavirus Combined With Flu: 3 Things To Know About Double Infection

Flurona

Photo: FIU student Rico Rozier gets the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine on campus, Aug. 24, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

A report of the first case of “flurona” in Israel — a double infection or coinfection of covid-19 and the flu — is raising new health issues and fears that the omicron variant may have already mutated into something worse.

Israeli scientists recorded the first case of the coronavirus-flu combination in a pregnant woman who had been admitted for delivery at a medical facility, Arab News reported. The woman had not been vaccinated for either the flu or covid, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Israel has seen a surge in flu cases in the past few weeks, according to doctors’ reports.

Covid-19 and flu present almost similar symptoms but have different periods between infection and presentation of symptoms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Testing is needed to differentiate the two viral diseases.

“COVID-19 can also take longer before people show symptoms and people can be contagious for longer,” the CDC said on its website. “People can be infected with both flu and the virus that causes COVID-19 at the same time and have symptoms of both influenza and COVID-19.”

Here are three things you need to know about flurona:

1. It is not a new covid-19 variant

Flurona is not a new covid-19 variant, rather it is a co-infection or infection of both diseases simultaneously. It is common for coinfections to occur in nature, according to public health experts.

Experts say they have been concerned about the likely hood of this occurring during the covid-19 pandemic leading to what they refer to as a “twindemic” of covid-19 and influenza.

2. Flurona indicates weak immunity

Medical experts say that contracting two similar diseases simultaneously is an indicator of a very weak immune system. The coinfection is still being studied.

3. Contracting both flu and covid might increase the severity

Experiments published by Nature.com showed that pre-infections of flu significantly promoted the infectivity of covid-19, leading to increased coronavirus “viral load and more severe lung damage”.

The study also reported that influenza “has a unique ability to aggravate Sars-CoV-2 infection and thus prevention of influenza infection is of great significance during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

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Photo: Florida International University student Rico Rozier gets the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine on campus, Aug. 24, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)