• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

It’s That Time Of Year Again: Do I Have Hay Fever Or COVID-19?

July 9, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

As much as we all might wish otherwise, COVID-19 just doesn’t want to go away. It keeps changing to survive and with that change, adds to the list of possible symptoms. Trouble is, some of those symptoms might be mistaken for something else doing the rounds at the moment – hay fever. So how can you tell the difference?

There’s a lot of scope for confusion; over 25 percent of adults in the US were diagnosed with hay fever in 2021 and unfortunately for those people, pollen levels have been particularly high and early this year.

At the same time, there are new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, circulating that have typically milder – albeit still unpleasant – symptoms that can overlap with seasonal conditions like hay fever.

There are, however, some key differences, between the most common symptoms of hay fever and the estimated most prevalent COVID variant circulating in the US right now, KP.3.

While some people have been experiencing nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting as symptoms of the newer variants, a pollen allergy isn’t likely to trigger the same effects.

On the other hand, a persistent cough is still a mainstay symptom of COVID, but though pollen might give you enough of a tickly throat that you feel the need to cough, it’s not likely to be the same extent as that with COVID.

Advertisement

Sticking with the throat, you might also get a sore one with both COVID and hay fever, but it’s generally not so common to get one with the latter. If it doesn’t go away after spending a while away from pollen and getting relief from other pollen symptoms, it’s more likely to be caused by an infection.

As for losing your sense of taste and smell, do you also have a blocked nose? If yes, then it’s possible that your inability to fully enjoy food and drink is from hay fever bunging you up.

The newest symptoms of COVID-19 come courtesy of the so-called FLiRT group of variants – of which KP.3 is a member – which have become particularly widespread. All are offshoots of JN.1, an Omicron spin-off that popped up and caused trouble earlier this year.

These variants are rather less saucy than they sound; the name comes from the amino acid mutations they’ve picked up in the spike protein, the part of the virus that latches onto the cells in our bodies and allows it to infect them.

Advertisement

The immune system can learn to recognize spike proteins – either naturally or through vaccination – and get rid of the virus, but by evolving into slightly different forms, the virus can evade destruction.

Though not always, viruses can often end up triggering much milder symptoms through this process – and that kids, is how we wound up in this confusing place.

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.   

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Sendoso nabs $100M as its corporate gifting platform passes 20,000 customers
  2. What Amplitude’s direct listing says about IPO pops (and how startups can avoid them)
  3. X-Ray Of A Single Atom Achieved In World First
  4. First Human Neuralink Brain Chip Recipient Controls Computer Mouse By Thinking, Musk Claims

Source Link: It's That Time Of Year Again: Do I Have Hay Fever Or COVID-19?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Scientists Perplexed By 407-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Plant That Doesn’t Follow The Fibonacci Sequence
  • This Giant Goldfish Hybrid Weighs As Much As A 10-Year-Old – A Stark Warning About Dumping Pets
  • Scientists Gave Mice Neanderthal And Denisovan Genes. The Results Were Intriguing
  • 2024 Saw Higher Levels Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Than Ever Before
  • Halloween Fireballs Will Grace Our Skies As The Taurid Meteor Showers Arrive
  • Newly Discovered Hunting Megastructures Suggest Pre-Bronze Age Societies More Sophisticated Than Previously Thought
  • What Is Spectroscopy And Why Is It So Important To Science?
  • Parkinson’s “Trigger” Seen For The First Time: Scientists Image The Toxic Molecules Inside The Human Brain
  • What Flying Animals Exist That Are Not Birds?
  • DNA Evidence Uncovers Surprising Origins Of Native Americans
  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Has A Rare “Anti-Tail”, New Observations Confirm
  • Asteroid Apophis: Animation Shows Asteroid’s Nail-Biting Close Approach To Earth In 2029
  • Titan Breaks A Key Chemistry Rule: What That Means For Alien Life
  • Scientists Studied “Chicago Rat Hole” – They Have Bad News, The South Atlantic’s Magnetic Field Weak Spot Is Growing, And Much More This Week
  • Could This Be The Real Reason Humans Survived And Neanderthals Died Out?
  • Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty
  • 2025 SC79 Is The Second-Fastest Asteroid Ever Found – And Only The Second Within Venus’ Orbit
  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version