How to Differentiate Between the Symptoms of Allergies, Common Cold, And COVID-19
The COVID-19 disease is a new disease that started in a small food market in Wuhan, China in December 2019. However, at the start of 2020, the disease had managed to spread to over 200 countries. The World Health Organization has declared this as a pandemic. As we know, there is no guaranteed cure as of yet, thus we must do our best to practice social distancing and proper hand hygiene.
If you need to step out of your home then you must wear protective gear such as respiratory masks and gloves. You can buy KN95 safety masks, other respiratory masks, and cloth masks on the website of Custom Earth Promos. They are an eco-friendly company that manufactures and customizes reusable shopping bags made out of recycled materials and cloth. They are customizable to put in any design such as logos for companies to use as promotional products.
There is not much knowledge about the symptoms, causes, and mode of transmission of the coronavirus. Furthermore, the symptoms of COVID-19 are very similar to the symptoms of the common cold and flu.
Thus, it confuses people and people having a cold may overreact and think of it as COVID-19 or the worst case is people neglect the symptoms thinking it is just a common cold and end up infecting a large number of people.
Symptoms of the seasonal flu or allergies
The most common symptoms of seasonal flu are:
- Fever or feverish chills
- Fatigue
- Cough
- Headache
- Muscle ache and body ache
The less frequent symptoms of the flu are:
- Sneezing
- Diarrhea
- Sore throat
- Nausea
- Runny nose
Symptoms of the common cold
The basic symptoms of a common cold are:
- Chest discomfort and cough
- Sneezing
- Sore throat
- Stuffy nose
The rarer symptoms of the common cold are:
- Body aches
- Fatigue
Symptoms of COVID-19
The following are some common symptoms of COVID-19.
- Fatigue
- Shortness of breath
- Fever
- Cough
The less frequent symptoms of COVID-19 that occur in severe cases are:
- Nausea and diarrhea
- Chills
- Shaking due to chills
- Runny or stuffy nose
- Muscle ache and pain
- Headache
- Sore throat
- Loss of smell or taste
The information above shows that the symptoms of the common cold, seasonal flu, and COVID-19 overlap one another and are almost the same. It is almost impossible to differentiate which one you are suffering from. Thus, in these cases, a test is the only thing that can confirm if it is COVID-19 or not.
The common cold does not kill anyone, and seasonal flu symptoms are just annoying. But the COVID-19 has killed almost 300,000 people around the world. Thus, you must not look over any of these symptoms.
If you have any of the symptoms above, you must immediately self-isolate yourself. Then if the symptoms keep developing in the next few days then you must seek medical attention.
Conclusion
There is a lot that we do not know about the coronavirus. However, we must not take it lightly just because the mortality rate is not too high. The virus is highly transmittable and you can never be sure of when the case will be mild or severe.
