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It\u2019s a common complaint this winter: After coming down with a respiratory illness, some people feel like they can\u2019t shake a lingering cough or runny nose despite other symptoms going away. Or they start to recover then see symptoms return a week or two later.<\/p>\n
Doctors say that course of events isn\u2019t unusual, though it might be more pronounced this year.<\/p>\n
Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are all circulating widely. As of Dec. 16, flu hospitalizations had increased nearly 200% over the previous four weeks. And Covid hospitalizations increased around 40% over the four-week period ending Dec. 9, the latest data available.<\/p>\n
NBC News spoke with seven doctors across seven states\u00a0about why some people\u2019s symptoms can persist for weeks or months. They offered several possible explanations.<\/p>\n
For one, the experts said, many people are more susceptible to respiratory illnesses this winter because they haven\u2019t had a recent infection or vaccination. Others may have gotten back-to-back infections that they confused with lingering symptoms.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also likely that, following the pandemic \u2014 when many common viruses weren\u2019t circulating widely \u2014 some people simply forgot how long symptoms can linger after a standard respiratory illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can take as long as two weeks or more to recover fully,\u201d said Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina\u2019s state epidemiologist.<\/p>\n
Because masking and isolation slowed the spread of many viruses during the pandemic, some people haven\u2019t been as exposed to flu or RSV over the last few years as they would have been. That can give rise to what doctors call \u201cimmunity debt\u201d \u2014 decreased immunity that makes people more susceptible to infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs more of us are encountering these viruses that we haven\u2019t seen in recent years, it might feel like some of them are a little bit more severe and we have some more severe symptoms than we had before,\u201d said Dr. Molly Fleece, a hospital epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medicine.<\/p>\n
A lack of vaccine-induced protection can also predispose people to more severe illness and make it harder to recover, doctors said.<\/p>\n
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent an alert to health care providers last week warning about low vaccination rates for Covid, flu and RSV.<\/p>\n
RSV vaccines have been approved for older adults and pregnant people, but just 17% of those ages 60 and older had gotten an RSV shot as of Dec. 9. Meanwhile, the CDC reported a supply shortage\u00a0for a newly approved RSV antibody injection for infants in October. However, additional doses became available last month, and 230,000 more are\u00a0expected in January.<\/p>\n
The flu vaccination rate so far this year is 42% for adults and 43% for children,\u00a0compared with 47% and 57%, respectively, the previous season. Just 18% of adults and 8% of eligible children have received the newest Covid vaccine.<\/p>\n
Last year, doctors said, masking and social distancing <\/strong>were also still more common.<\/p>\n \u201cThat may be why people are getting more sick now,\u201d said Dr. Caroline Goldzweig, chief medical officer of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Foundation in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Since this is only the second year with Covid, flu and RSV circulating widely at once, there may simply be more opportunities to get sick than in previous winters, doctors said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past several years, we\u2019ve had primarily Covid or primarily RSV peaking, and now we have multiple respiratory viruses all rising at the same time,\u201d said Dr. Larissa Pisney, an infectious disease specialist at UCHealth in Aurora, Colorado.<\/p>\n That could raise the chance of back-to-back infections.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s entirely possible to be exposed to several different viruses over the course of the winter and have several different bouts of respiratory infection,\u201d said Dr. Daniel Ouellette, a pulmonary disease specialist at Henry Ford Health in Detroit.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also possible to get more than one virus at a time, though the CDC hasn\u2019t noticed that happening much, according to its director, Dr. Mandy Cohen.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see co-infections at about a similar level to this time last season,\u201d Cohen said.<\/p>\n However, several doctors said they\u2019re seeing an increase in bacterial infections \u2014 such as strep throat, whooping cough or pneumonia \u2014 that either follow a viral illness or occur at the same time.<\/p>\n \u201cIn some situations, having a viral respiratory illness increases your risk of having bacterial pneumonia, which we\u2019ve classically seen for a long time with the flu, but then we also saw a little bit of that with Covid as well,\u201d said Dr. Shivanjali Shankaran, an infectious disease physician at Rush University Medical Group in Chicago.<\/p>\n Symptoms that go away then reappear could be part of the same viral infection, said Dr. Donald Yealy, chief medical officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can have an initial infection, start to get better and then have some recrudescence \u2014 in other words, recurrence of the symptoms as you\u2019re recovering,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople may mistake that for two separate infections.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also fairly common to feel sick for several weeks, doctors said. And Covid, flu and RSV can all result in a post-viral cough.<\/p>\n \u201cThat post-viral cough doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the person is still potentially able to spread the infection to others. It\u2019s just a residual effect of their prior infection,\u201d Fleece said.<\/p>\n But a small minority of people may not recover for months or years. Long Covid affects around 6% of U.S. adults, according to a June survey by the Census Bureau. Similarly, it\u2019s possible to see lingering effects from flu or colds.<\/p>\n A study published last week showed that the flu can lead to a persistent cough or shortness of breath over the course of at least 18 months. And an analysis of U.K. adults published in October found that common cold viruses can lead to coughing, stomach pain and diarrhea more than a month after an initial infection. Scientists are still trying to understand why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] It\u2019s a common complaint this winter: After coming down with a respiratory illness, some people feel like they can\u2019t shake a lingering cough or runny nose despite other symptoms going away. Or they start to recover then see symptoms return a week or two later. Doctors say that course of events isn\u2019t unusual, though …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Two infections back to back<\/strong><\/h2>\n
It\u2019s normal for symptoms to linger or recur<\/h2>\n