Badley and other experts pointed out, it’s generally better to have one infection rather than two. “It is hard to predict,” he continued, “but we expect that the majority of people who are co-infected with the two viruses will also do just fine.”īut as Dr. Badley, an infectious disease specialist and the chair of the SARS-CoV-2 Covid-19 Task Force at the Mayo Clinic. The majority of people who have Covid do just fine, especially if they’re vaccinated,” said Dr. “The majority of people who have influenza do just fine. But judging from past trends, doctors are not overly worried. Still, scientists don’t know for sure yet, because so few people have tested positive for both Covid-19 and influenza. Grein said, “because it’s activating that same immune response that’s going to be effective in fighting both.” “An infection to one might help to aid your immune response to another,” Dr. A strong immune response may actually help the body fight off pathogens of all types, so one infection could stimulate some additional protection. Will co-infection make me twice as sick?Ī co-infection doesn’t immediately mean that a patient will be doubly sick. “We anticipate that as flu becomes more prevalent, we will see more co-infections.” If it becomes a serious problem, experts expect to know a lot more about it in the coming months. Grein, an infectious disease physician and the director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. “The reason we haven’t talked about it much is that it’s not been clinically a challenge yet,” said Dr. Last winter was also a notably subdued cold and flu season, with fewer people socializing and many wearing masks. A spring 2020 study in New York City, for instance, found that after about 1,200 Covid-19 patients were tested for other respiratory viruses, such as those causing influenza or the common cold, just 36, or less than 3 percent, had simultaneous infections. And researchers in Barcelona published a paper in May 2020 describing four people with both illnesses in the early months of the pandemic.Īt the time, before vaccines were available, such dual infections, or what infectious disease experts call co-infections, appeared to be uncommon. The Atlantic reported on a family in Queens that tested positive for both infections that February. From late January to late March 2020, researchers in China found almost 100 cases of patients testing positive for both illnesses in Wuhan.
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