‘Flurona’ cases reported in Southwest Georgia

ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - “Flurona.” It’s a term for when someone has both the flu and COVID-19 at the same time.

Doctors at Phoebe said they are seeing this in their health system, but they say it’s not uncommon to get multiple viruses at once.

Dr. James Black, the emergency medical director at Phoebe, said they’ve been seeing cases of flu and COVID at the same time for several months now, in both children and adults.

He said although they aren’t seeing large numbers of people testing positive for both, it does happen.

Adding they don’t rule anything out until getting a test.

“When you come in and you have symptoms, if you’re an adult, you’re going to be tested for influenza and COVID. If you’re an infant and on RSV at the same time. If you exhibit symptoms of sore throat or difficulty swallowing, we’ll go ahead and get a strep test as well. Your symptoms have a presentation you’ll probably get them all, but we will do all of the swabs at one time,” said Black.

He said it’s not uncommon for a person fighting off disease and contact another.

For this reason, they are recommending people with common cold symptoms to isolate. Adding you can get a false negative test or it can be so early on the test can’t detect the virus.

He said for this region we’re in, we’re at the beginning of flu season.

They’re hopeful more people getting vaccinated and being more cautious will cut down on the amount of flu and COVID cases.

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