Vaccines have managed to tame Covid, at least in these summer months. But with the arrival of the cold season it is difficult to predict what will happen. Especially on the front of another seasonal pandemic: flu, an enemy that last year gave us some respite, but which this time, with the anti-Covid regulations set to thin out in the coming months, could return to hit hard. By making the fears of a double epidemic, or twindemic, Covid 19 and influenza current once again, diseases with very similar symptoms, which can make it difficult for citizens to understand how to react to the first sneeze or the arrival of some fever line.
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What awaits us? And how do Italian citizens plan to deal with the coming months? This was discussed during the “Influenza and Covid-19: between variants and variables” event, organized by Assosalute, the national self-medication association, to present the results of a survey conducted in collaboration with Human Highway on seasonal influenza and the role of prevention and health in the new pandemic context.
The influence to come
“Last year the flu was not seen, not only during our winter, but also in that of the southern hemisphere, which in Italy corresponds to summer”, he explained. Fabrizio Pregliasco, medical director of the Galeazzi Orthopedic Institute in Milan. “Normally it is precisely those countries that we look to predict what our flu season will be like, but in recent months they have applied the same prevention rules that we also use, so it is difficult to imagine what will happen when we start abandoning them”.
As a precaution, it is good to prepare for the worst scenario, with flu and parainfluenza viruses returning to grind millions of infections and Covid 19 not letting go of its grip. In a similar scenario – explains Pregliasco – vaccination against the flu will become even more important, to prevent infections among the elderly and other categories at risk, and thus reduce the workload for the National Health System.
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More attention to health
The research by Human Highway, conducted online on a thousand Italian citizens, reveals that for 8 out of 10 respondents today the attention towards their own state of health, and in particular with regard to prevention, has grown.
In fact, 35.4% of the interviewees declared that they intend to carry out the flu vaccine, a percentage that is growing sharply compared to 14% in 2017. Among these, 43% who already do it every year, 26% who will on the advice of their doctor, 27% who consider it a necessary choice to protect the health of others, and 31% who see the flu vaccine as a necessary tool to avoid the doubt of having contracted Covid 19 in case of flu symptoms, common to both diseases.
What to do in case of symptoms?
So what to do in case of fever, muscle aches, runny nose, and other symptoms common to many seasonal respiratory viruses? 23% of respondents said they would contact their doctor as soon as the first flu symptom appears, while 68.6% would wait for more symptoms to appear for a medical consultation. 42.9% of the interviewees also intend to deal with the first flu symptoms with rest and over-the-counter drugs, reserving the right to call the family doctor only if the problems are not resolved within three days.
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“The initial symptoms of Covid and influenza are actually similar, but by now we have learned to recognize them using triage, a series of questions that allow a diagnosis to be made with excellent confidence”, he explained. Claudio Cricelli, President of the Italian Society of General Medicine (Simg). “The new delta variant actually complicates things, because initially it has symptoms more similar to those of the common cold than the one that circulated at the beginning of the pandemic, and more rarely presents some of the symptoms we have come to know, such as loss of taste and smell. For this reason, today even in the case of a cold we do a swab immediately. Prevention will remain essential in the coming months: starting with a healthy lifestyle, respecting the rules of distancing and using of the mask, but also, in particular for the categories at risk, with the use of flu vaccines “.
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