You can catch the flu and Covid. No, 'flurona' isn't real.

Scientists want to clear the air on a 'misleading' trend: 'Flurona' isn't real It would have been hard to know in March 2020 that Covid-19 testing limitations in New York City would help lead doctors at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bro NBC News

It would have been hard to know in March 2020 that Covid-19 testing limitations in New York City would help lead doctors at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx to a fascinating surprise. 

Testing for Covid at the time was sluggish and expensive and in limited supply. Hospitals across the city were beginning to overfill. So doctors at the hospital often ordered several tests for patients, trying to identify — or eliminate from suspicion — other possible infections.   

First, they’d rule out influenza and RSV, common infections. Then, they’d test for Covid-19 and a slew of other viruses using the same sample at the same time. 

What they found was eye-opening. Over a month’s time, tests showed that nearly 5 percent of patients had not only Covid, but another viral respiratory infection, too.  

At first, doctors worried more for these patients, whose immune systems were fighting two battles at once. 

“What we found was actually that patients who had Covid plus another infection — they had lower rates of inflammation in their body and were less likely to be admitted to the hospital,” said Dr. Sarah Baron, a physician at the hospital who helped author a study in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy to describe the findings. 

Patients with more than one infection were actually faring better, their data suggest. 

The study is small and limited. It captures just 14 cases of simultaneous infection and left out influenza cases, and it prompts more questions than answers. 

But the research may offer an intriguing window into viral interference, when one virus suppresses the effects of another, and contribute to a growing body of evidence about how the phenomenon acts. Viruses can also enhance other infections and make people sicker, which has been documented in other studies of influenza and the common cold.

Learning more about the complex interactions among viruses within the same host could help researchers better understand the complex patterns of epidemics. ...