Category: Health Tips

How can I tell the difference between the flu and COVID-19?

It’s impossible to tell without a test. Influenza and COVID-19 have such similar symptoms, you may need to get tested to know what’s making you miserable.

Body aches, sore throat, fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue and headaches are symptoms shared by the two.

One difference? People with the flu typically feel sickest during the first week of illness. With COVID-19, people may feel the worst during the second or third week, and they may be sicker for a longer period.

Another difference: COVID-19 is more likely than the flu to cause a loss of taste or smell. But not everyone experiences that symptom, so it’s not a reliable way to tell the viruses apart.

That leaves testing, which will become more important as flu season ramps up this fall in the Northern Hemisphere. Doctors will need to know test results to determine the best treatment.

For more information, visit news.yahoo.com

WestJet, Canada’s second largest airline, is now offering complimentary COVID-19 insurance for eligible passengers for travel to and from the US, Europe, the UK, Mexico and the Caribbean until August 31, 2021. The carrier joins Air Canada in offering free Covid-19 insurance in an effort to boost sales as more Canadians elect to stay home or travel domestically to avoid Canada’s 14-day quarantine for international travelers.

Originally WestJet’s insurance did not include US coverage but will now cover travel to the United States. On September 25, 2020 WestJet announced that “guests travelling to, through or from the United States are now eligible for the airline’s enhanced $200,000 CAD COVID-19 travel insurance coverage for air-only and vacation reservations. The enhanced coverage will retroactively include all bookings made as of September 18, 2020 and will increase by $100,000 CAD to include up to a maximum of $200,000 CAD at no additional charge to eligible guests.”

Arved von zur Muehlen, WestJet Chief Commercial Officer, said that “Our research shows that a lack of COVID insurance is a considerable barrier to travel and our guests were seeking the inclusion of U.S. destinations to our travel insurance offering. Eligible guests travelling to and from the destinations we serve can now have an added layer of confidence knowing they are covered for up to $200,000 CAD against unforeseen medical costs related to COVID-19 when booking with WestJet.”

For more information, visit: forbes.com

Antibodies may feel like an extra shield of protection for recovered COVID-19 patients, but experts warn against relying on them to stop the spread.

There is “credible evidence” of reinfection and it’s “probably more common” than we think, says infectious disease expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch.

Immunity is “a dance between the virus and the person’s immune system,” he told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Tuesday. “That’s going to be different for every single person. It’s not quite clear who’s going to have what degree of immunity for what period of time.”

Though a growing body of research shows that SARS-CoV-2 antibodies can be present for many months after infection, their presence does not equal immunity to reinfection, scientists stress. There remains a lack of evidence as to how much immunity coronavirus antibodies provide, if any at all, though U.S. President Donald Trump recently made news for claiming otherwise.

For more information, visit: ctvnews.ca

A new study of COVID-19, based on data from a symptom tracker app, determined that there are six distinct “types” of the disease involving different clusters of symptoms. The discovery could potentially open new possibilities for how doctors can better treat individual patients and predict what level of hospital care they would need.

Researchers from King’s College London studied data from approximately 1,600 U.K. and U.S. patients who regularly logged their symptoms in the COVID Symptom Tracker App in March and April.

Typically, doctors will look for key symptoms such as cough, fever and loss of the sense of smell to detect COVID-19. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, says the six different “types” of COVID-19 can vary by severity and come with their own set of symptoms.

For more information, visit: cbsnews.com