Los Angeles County has detected the first case of the “flurona,” the flu in combination with coronavirus, according to reports.
The new and unique case has been confirmed by health experts at a COVID-19 testing site Brentwood, in Northern California, after a child tested positive for both Influenza A and SARS-CoV-2, a local news outlet reported.
The child’s mother was also tested positive for coronavirus-positive the next day.
The individuals were tested in accordance with traveling protocols as they recently came back from a family vacation in Cabo San Lucas, a resort city in Mexico. Other members of their family received a coronavirus-positive test.
This week in Los Angeles County, over 20,000 daily new cases of the omicron coronavirus were reported, more than triple the number of cases confirmed last week, according to the L.A. County Health Department. Due to the similarities between the viruses, health officials are finding it difficult to differentiate between COVID-19, the flu, or the common cold in patients who have not yet been tested.
Symptoms of both Influenza and COVID-19 include a sore throat, coughing, body aches, a runny nose, and fever. However, a combination of respiratory diseases is not uncommon.
“Concurrent infection with more than one respiratory virus is exceedingly common and there is no reason to expect that SARS-CoV-2 should be an exception to this rule. We have seen SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza multiplex test results where both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 were positive,” the LA County Health Department said, per FOX 11 of Los Angeles.
David Edwards, a Harvard University aerosol scientist, told Fox News that the respiratory viruses spread similarly in the air through “very, very small droplets that don’t settle by gravity.”
“Can it happen? Absolutely. And will it happen more? I’m sure it will,” Edwards said. “But people should recognize that the probability of being infected by both viruses will be a lot lower than the probability of being infected by either one of them.”
The “flurona” combination has been reported in North Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, and in the country of Israel.