Is it the flu or is it COVID? One at-home check can inform you

With the flu season getting underway, and COVID-19 nonetheless circulating, when you get sick you may surprise: ‘Which virus obtained me this time?’ Till now, sick individuals who needed to get examined needed to crawl off the bed and sit in a ready room surrounded by different coughing, sneezing folks.

“You could have a fever or aches and pains. You could have nasal congestion,” says Courtney Lias, who helps regulate checks on the Meals and Drug Administration.

She says figuring out what you’ve got obtained helps reply quite a lot of questions. “What varieties of precautions ought to I take? How ought to I be taking good care of my well being and the well being of my household?” Lias says.

This yr testing obtained simpler. For the primary time, new house checks — accessible at pharmacies with out a prescription — can check for each the flu and COVID concurrently.

Lias and others say the brand new checks are a game-changer.

“I feel it is a very thrilling improvement simply in time for this fall’s respiratory virus season,” says Lias. “It is going to actually allow folks to get by way of this season with slightly bit extra peace of thoughts.”

The checks are very dependable — they not often say somebody’s constructive once they’re actually damaging or vice versa, in line with the FDA. For those who check damaging however are nonetheless having signs that really feel like COVID or the flu a few days later, docs suggest taking a second check.

The checks price about the identical as a COVID check — about $15 every — which might be lower than the copay for going to a health care provider.

The FDA has given the inexperienced mild to 9 over-the-counter flu and COVID checks to this point, together with the first that recently received full FDA authorization. The others acquired a extra contingent “emergency use authorization.”

All however one of many new checks are “antigen” checks, which implies they work similar to the do-it-yourself COVID checks folks realized to make use of through the pandemic. First you swab inside your nostril then check just a few drops of the pattern. One of the tests is a “molecular” test that makes use of totally different know-how.

Inside 15 to half-hour, the check will point out whether or not you are constructive for the SARS-CoV2 virus, which causes COVID, or one among two strains of flu virus.

“This can be a actual landmark shift in the way in which that we are able to diagnose these viral signs,” says Dr. Greg Martin, who research checks at Emory College.

“Having these checks accessible goes to be actually useful to folks,” Martin says. “They will have their outcome actually rapidly and so they’ll be capable to assist decide both on their very own or by contacting their doctor in order that they’ll determine what therapy is important and get that began as rapidly as attainable.”

Individuals who check constructive can ask their physician to name in a prescription for antiviral drugs like Paxlovid for COVID or Tamiflu for the flu, in the event that they want remedy. These medicine work greatest if began inside just a few days of the signs beginning. The brand new checks discriminate between influenza A or influenza B. Flu A tends to make folks sicker than flu B, so figuring out which one you might have can assist your physician determine what you might want to do.

The checks can assist folks take steps to guard these round them extra rapidly, in line with Dr. Chaz Langelier, an infectious illness doctor on the College of California, San Francisco.

“Understanding when you’re contaminated early can even extra successfully assist stop transmission to others,” Langelier says.

“As a substitute of strolling round with an an infection for a number of days questioning you probably have flu or COVID you may know immediately.”

So folks can select to placed on masks, or work from and keep away from going into the workplace and infecting others, he says.

“It is actually an exquisite development for public well being and for human well being.”

This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh