Ever since the pandemic began, public health experts have warned about the possibility of getting COVID-19 and the flu at once. With flu cases jumping up across the country after a very mild season last year, doctors are warning that so-called “flurona” can happen—and Israel just had its first documented case, which may be the first in the world.
Israeli health officials recently announced that the patient was an unvaccinated pregnant woman who had both the flu and COVID-19 (likely Omicron variant) at once, per the Times of Israel. The woman had mild symptoms and was released from the hospital on Thursday.
Flu cases are steadily increasing across the U.S.—4,514 new cases were diagnosed the week of December 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—and that raises the risk that flurona can happen here, says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York.