As the nation enters yet another summer Covid wave , doctors say it’s nearly impossible to diagnose a person with the illness based on symptoms alone. “Every week, we test someone for Covid who I didn’t think had it who tests positive. Then we have others who I’m pretty sure have Covid who test negative,” said Dr.
Steven Furr, a family physician in Jackson, Alabama, and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. “It’s really hard to separate Covid from any other respiratory illness right now,” he said. Covid patients, Furr and other doctors said, are showing up at clinics with a spectrum of symptoms .
“Some people have a very classic sore throat, runny nose, cough and low-grade fever,” said Dr. Paul Sax, the clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “In others, it’s mostly nausea and diarrhea with very minimal respiratory symptoms.
It can vary from A to Z and beyond.” Dr. Bernard Camins, medical director for infection prevention at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, has noted the same trend.
Without a test, “you can’t tell nowadays whether it’s a cold or Covid,” Camins said. As of mid-June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it appeared that Covid infections were rising in 39 states. Covid-related emergency department visits , hospitalizations and deaths are all up as well.
Covid keeps changing to .
