5 ms·
Not sure about in other areas, but where i am from the hospital systems rarely checked for flu. During the pandemic anyone symptomatic was told to stay home.
by roody15 5y ago
Not sure about in other areas, but where i am from the hospital systems rarely checked for flu. During the pandemic anyone symptomatic was told to stay home. People who visited a health clinic were typically first given a covid test. My guess is quite a few people who had the flu over the last year likely did not get an official flu test since it was difficult to get into a hospital or health clinics during the pandemic.
- widget1321 5y agoI can't speak for everywhere, but I know that from what I'm told here (was actually talking about the lack of flu with some nurses who worked in local clinics and hospitals in the area), those who had covid-like symptoms were usually given the covid test no matter what. But, if flu would have normally been suspected and there wasn't a strong indication it was covid (loss of smell/taste, known exposure to a covid-positive person, etc.), they usually also got a flu test just in case.
- nitrogen 5y agoI look forward to the day when the standard practice is to test for every common respiratory pathogen at once when someone has cold/flu symptoms. The technology exists now for personalized, data-driven medicine to take off. I know someone who works for a company who produces such tests at the same cost as a single test today, but often insurance companies and providers don't know how to bill for them, so you see stories in the news about "irresponsible doctors who should never have ordered 20 tests" that were really a single test billed incorrectly.
- samiru 5y agoIn Finland Covid can be diagnosed just by flu like symptoms, even with a negative test result for Covid. Not sure how much this affects rhe stats. Practically no cases of influenza are recorded, though.