Flu or COVID? Epidemiologist explains some of the differences

Is it a cold, the flu or is it COVID? Many Canadians across the country are facing this current problem of determining the infection they might have. To help alleviate these concerns, CityNews spoke to an expert who can give us some answers.

There are a number of similarities when it comes to symptoms of COVID versus the flu such as fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, sore throat, body aches, runny nose, headache, and vomiting and diarrhea. And some of the symptoms that were previously present in COVID patients, have not been present with the Omicron variant.

“There really has been a change with this version of Omicron in that some of those more specific and unusual markers such as loss of taste and smell with previous variants of the Coronavirus really are not the markers of Omicron. They’ve very similar to symptoms of cold or mild flu, being headache, fatigue, runny nose, more of those upper respiratory infection symptoms and not some of those deep lung symptoms or the loss of taste and smell,” explained Cynthia Carr, Founder and Epidemiologist at EPI Research Inc.

Compared to other variants of COVID-19, Omicron is much more contagious which is why it is easily spreading with mild symptoms.

“It appears to be even more contagious than what we’ve seen before, but it seems to be moving back to that pattern where four of these strains of the coronavirus are the cause of one of four common colds. That’s a lot of common colds that it’s already causing, so it shows that it’s very good at circulating in a population and being transmissible and this is, unfortunately, another example of it being transmissible and continuing to have some ability to cause severe illness.”

Carr points out that influenza typically affects you within 48 hours, however with Omicron, the symptoms come faster and are much more infectious. They could also be so mild that one wouldn’t recognize it yet as a problem.

“The reality is, if you have an infection, if you have symptoms of an infection, you should stay home, wear a well-fitted mask if you do need to go out and let people around you that you’ve been with, particularly in the previous 48 hours before you developed symptoms, take the time to let those people know so that they can also watch their health, modify their behaviour as needed.

“So, at this point, I don’t think we need to fixate so much on, ‘but I don’t know exactly what the virus is, I don’t know what to do.’ You do know what to do. Whatever the virus is, you monitor yourself for ongoing severity,” said Carr.

Experts say that no matter the infection, they advise you to stay home and isolate even if your symptoms are mild to keep yourself and everyone else safe.