'Flurona' is not the name of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant
Last updated on: 10 January,2022 09:16 am
'Flurona' is not the name of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant
(Reuters) - Contrary to claims shared widely online, “flurona” is not the name of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19. Experts and health authorities told Reuters that the term is used to describe cases of simultaneous infection, or “coinfection”, of the flu and COVID-19.
“As Israel announce a new variant called flurona , a country with the highest per capita jabbed recipients, will the covid cultists ever wake up, or is this just another coincidence that goes right over the masses heads?”, reads a post on Twitter ( here ).
Other social media posts that refer to “flurona” as a new variant or a mixture of the flu and COVID-19 can be seen ( here ), ( here ).
The variant claim was shared after a hospital in Israel reported its first detected case of flu and COVID-19 coinfection in the country. The news was reported by local ( here , here ) and global media ( here ).
This term, however, isn’t new and it was not originally coined to describe a new disease or variant of SARS-CoV-2, as some inaccurate publications online claim.
“Flurona was a term coined in late 2020 by the Israeli Outbreak Management Advisory Team to describe the potential for parallel outbreaks of influenza and COVID, and the resulting burden on the health system,” said Yitzah Cohen, from the Corona Israel Information Headquarters (which belongs to Israel Ministry of Health) in an email to Reuters.
On Dec. 16, 2020, the official website of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians published an article on the influenza vaccination rate increase, in which the term “flurona” was used ( here ).
Cheryl Bennet, spokesperson for GISAID ( www.gisaid.org/ ), a global initiative which allows for rapid sharing of genomic information and epidemiological data related to viruses, confirmed to Reuters via email that “flurona is not a variant,” adding, “flurona is a name used sometimes when people have the flu and COVID-19 at the same time.”
Bennet said that the procedure for properly identifying and naming a variant of SARS-CoV-2 is done by the World Health Organization (WHO) in consultation with a team of experts.
WHO told Reuters that the recommended way to refer to “flurona” is as a coinfection of influenza and COVID-19.
According to the organization, the prevalence of coinfection remains relatively low and “more evidence is required to better understand the interactions between the two viruses and if the severity of illness is higher when influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses co-infect, especially in the high-risk individuals and the elderly.”
Cohen said that on Dec. 23, 2021, a 29-year-old pregnant woman had a positive result for COVID-19. On Dec. 26, 2021, she also tested positive for influenza type A. The patient was hospitalized but recovered and was released. “However, the press capitalized on the existing term and labeled this case Flurona,” Cohen said. To date, he added, Israel is aware of only one coinfection.
“The Ministry of Health sees no particular public health implications of the case, and has taken no special measures to address it,” he said.
This is not the first reported case in the world of influenza and COVID-19 coinfection. Since May 2020, a team of researchers from Hospital Clínic Barcelona published a study in the medical journal The Lancet about four patients with coinfection diagnosed simultaneously ( bit.ly/3q3HCcG ).
In an email to Reuters, Enrique Montagud-Marrahi, one of the authors of the study, explained that COVID-19 symptoms – like a dry cough, shortness for breath, strong muscle pain and fever – were dominant during the coinfections they documented. However, with the spread of the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant, the symptoms of COVID-19 and influenza are strongly superimposed.
Available data doesn’t suggest that patients with coinfections experience a poor prognosis. However, Montagud-Marrahi said clinical experience is scarce because the influenza virus hardly circulated last year, and because joint testing for both SARS-CoV-2 and the influenza virus is not routinely performed.
He added that vaccination and general measures like social distancing and the use of face masks are the most effective ways to prevent both COVID-19 and the flu.
VERDICT
Misleading. ‘Flurona’ is not a term for a new virus or strain of SARS-CoV-2. The term describes the coinfection of influenza and COVID-19 in one patient.