Three viruses behind Covid-like symptoms, testing key: Doctors

New Delhi: It isn’t simply Covid that is on the rise but additionally instances of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and seasonal flu at the moment of the 12 months. The signs of all three – Covid, RSV and flu – are comparable and can’t be differentiated clinically except examined, medical doctors say.

“Signs attributable to flu or influenza, Covid-19 and RSV are fairly comparable and embody fever, cough, and shortness of breath. As a result of the signs are so comparable, it may be fairly troublesome to clinically distinguish between infections attributable to any of those three viruses as they’re all respiratory viruses. So, the one technique to differentiate between them is to do the testing to obviously differentiate and set up which of those has brought on these signs,” stated Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, group medical director at Max Healthcare.

Winter brings with it a surge in instances of seasonal viral infections of the higher respiratory tract. The three viruses mostly accountable are influenza, RSV, and Covid-19, stated Dr Vaishali Solao, head-critical care at Fortis Hospital, Mulund, Mumbai.

India, which can be seeing a slight uptick in Covid instances, recorded 761 new instances on Friday and 12 deaths because of the viral illness. The variety of lively Covid-19 instances within the nation got here down marginally to 4,334 from 4,423 on Thursday. The JN.1 subvariant has develop into the dominant Covid-19 variant in India, accounting for greater than 60% of the coronavirus instances within the nation, based on folks with information of the matter.

“XBB, which was the dominant variant for an extended interval within the nation, has been surpassed by JN.1, which has crossed the five hundred mark,” stated one of many individuals, who didn’t want to be recognized.

Medical doctors say adults, when contaminated with any of those three, usually expertise a chilly, runny nostril, sneezing, blocked nostril, throat ache, dry cough, physique ache, and fever. “Most signs are widespread to all three, however some, like wheezing (a whistling noise within the chest), are particular to RSV, whereas lack of scent is restricted to Covid-19,” Dr Salao stated.In adults, each these signs are usually not quite common and can’t be reliably used to distinguish between the viruses.Dr Budhiraja stated that within the massive majority, the sickness attributable to all three viruses is kind of gentle. “Particularly now, since a bigger chunk of the inhabitants is vaccinated and was additionally developed hybrid immunity by advantage of pure an infection,” he stated.