Srinagar: “People should not mistake flu illness with coronavirus as both have similar symptoms which is fever and cough,” said Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Saturday in a communiqué.
“Every fever and cough is not coronavirus,” said DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan.
“A suspect case of new coronavirus is one who has respiratory symptoms and has a history of travel to the affected area in the past 14 days or the one who has been in close contact with a confirmed case of coronavirus infection within the last 14 days,” he said.
Dr Nisar said despite similar symptoms of coronavirus to flu, there are some important differences.
Quoting a study published in The Lancet, he said coronavirus cases do not exhibit upper respiratory tract symptoms like runny nose, sore throat and sneezing which are seen in most of flu cases.
Dr Nisar said the new coronavirus, like flu spreads mostly from person to person by respiratory droplets, but new research suggests coronavirus can also spread through feces and this could be the reason for the rapid spread of the virus.
“While this year’s flu virus is hitting kids especially hard, coronavirus has largely spared this vulnerable group,” he added.
“Coronavirus, also called COVID-19 is a novel (new) virus that originated in Wuhan city of China has killed 2,362 people and infected 77,925 people so far.
Men represent the majority of novel coronavirus cases, and they seem to die more often from this deadly infection.
Research has found that the death rate among men was 2.8% compared to 1.7% among women.
Majority of the patients who died of novel coronavirus were older men with underlying health problems like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease,” said Dr Nisar.
