Most private insurance companies cover the cost of these over-the-counter tests, and Medicare beneficiaries can receive up to eight a month, free of charge. You can also order four free tests from the federal government (visit ) or check in with a nearby health center to see if it offers COVID-19 test kits to members of the community. That way, if you start to feel sick, you can check to see if your symptoms are due to COVID-19 in a matter of minutes. Keep a COVID test - or two - on handĪ crucial tool this time of year is an at-home COVID-19 test. And chances are if you have a cold, you won’t experience the body aches and fever that accompany the other two infections. Sneezing a lot? That’s typically a symptom that’s more common with a cold than with flu or COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health says. “That’s why it’s important to talk to your primary care doctor or provider” if you experience it. “It’s a little disconcerting, because so many things can cause confusion,” Koncilja adds. So, if you or a friend or family member is experiencing a sudden onset of confusion, don’t rule out COVID-19, even if there’s no fever (older adults often don’t run fevers the same way younger people do, both Shaw and Koncilja note) or any of the other usual symptoms, like cough or fatigue. And with these recent BA.4 and BA.5, I’ve seen more of my older adults present with symptoms of confusion, where you might think it’s a urinary tract infection,” he says. But if you’re trying to differentiate, I would say that those elements, if they’re present, might be helpful,” Shaw says.įinally, disorientation could point to COVID-19, especially in older adults, says Kenneth Koncilja, M.D., a geriatrician at Cleveland Clinic. “That said, there are other viral and bacterial illnesses that can give you diarrhea, so that alone doesn’t mean it can only be COVID. Diarrhea is not a common sign of flu in adults (it is in kids, though), nor does it usually accompany a cold. It may not be as prevalent as some of the other COVID symptoms, but people still get it with a coronavirus infection. “And it’s one we would see less so in someone with a common cold or someone with influenza.”Īnother symptom that’s more typical with COVID-19 than with the flu or a cold is diarrhea, Shaw says. “Especially if you don’t really have a runny or stuffy nose and you have this symptom, that probably is something that’s more specific for COVID,” says Albert Shaw, M.D., an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Loss of taste and smell, for example, is a common warning sign of a coronavirus infection. There are some more specific symptoms, though, that could signal your sickness is caused by COVID-19. Chief among them are sore throat, runny nose, cough, headache and body aches. The truth of the matter is, several symptoms for cold, flu and COVID-19 overlap. COVID-19 has a few distinguishing symptoms Plus, they have some advice on what you can do to avoid getting sick in the first place. As we face winter, when people head inside and respiratory viruses come out in full force, experts share some tips on how to distinguish among the different diseases and how to recover from each of them.
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