Having the flu does not prevent you from having Covid-19, the reverse is also true.
In Israel, authorities announced last week that a woman had been infected with both viruses at the same time.
Flurona - contraction of flu in English ("flu") and corona, for coronavirus - quickly made the headlines, while there are fears of having to manage two epidemics: that of Covid-19, boosted by the Omicron variant, and that of the flu.
Who is this patient infected with Flurona?
According to Israeli authorities, quoted by The Times of Israel, this woman was hospitalized at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv.
The hospital told the Hamodia newspaper that she was not vaccinated, neither against influenza nor against Covid-19.
However, she was able to leave the hospital on Thursday in good health.
Should we be worried?
The fate of this pregnant woman gives grounds for optimism: although infected with the flu and Covid-19, she was able to leave the hospital. The Israeli authorities - believing that other patients must be in this case, without having been diagnosed - have said to study this case to see if this "cocktail" of two viruses could cause a more serious illness (which no study does allows to confirm or deny today). “The diseases are the same; they are viral and cause breathing difficulties because both attack the upper respiratory tract, ”Professor Arnon Vizhnitser, director of the hospital's gynecology department, told The Times of Israel.
In addition to this combination, the real concern of the authorities is to have to deal with an influenza epidemic and a Covid-19 epidemic at the same time, which would put even more pressure on hospitals.
Is this a first?
Flu and Covid-19 in the same body?
This is not surprising.
It has never been said that this was impossible.
In the United States, the newspaper The Atlantic reported last November the story of a man who in hospital, in February 2020, had tested positive for influenza.
It had only been two weeks since we were talking about the Covid-19.
A test carried out the following month had shown that he had had Covid-19 and the flu at the same time.
In a study published in 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), it was already written that "Doctors from several countries have reported patients who tested positive for both Covid-19 and for the flu."
A study conducted in Wuhan, the source of the pandemic, 10% of the more than 500 patients admitted to hospital between January 28 and February 18 had also been infected with the flu.