Are you feeling grotty all the time this summer?
We are in a summer wave of Covid so if you have a cough or fever then the virus is a possible culprit.
We do not collect the same detailed data as during the peak of the pandemic, but the wave started to
build around May, external.
“I know so many people who have recently had Covid,” says Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London.
Around 3,000 people in hospital are now testing positive for Covid - around twice the figure for early April. The infection isn't necessarily the reason they have been admitted, but it is one way of gauging whether we are in a wave.
“There is a very significant rise, Covid hasn’t yet turned into a winter virus we can be very confident in saying that," says Prof Openshaw.
This seems to be driven by the FLiRT variants of the virus and pubs rammed with football fans may have given the virus a helping hand too.
The virus is still capable of causing an unpleasant infection and while we are no longer taking emergency measures to keep it in check, we are giving two doses of vaccine a year to the most vulnerable because of the threat it can pose.
Whooping Cough
We have also seen the resurgence of whooping cough – also known as the 100-day cough or pertussis – in 2024.
There is an outbreak of the bacterial infection every three-to-five years, but the last one was in 2016.
So there probably should have been an outbreak during the peak-pandemic years.
The UK Health Security Agency
warns, external: “The impact of the pandemic also means there is reduced immunity in the population.”
The symptoms are similar to a cold with a runny nose and sore throat which evolves into bouts of coughing, which can last a long time, hence the 100-day nickname.
Anyone can catch whooping cough, but it is generally mild in adults. The problem is they can pass it onto babies who are highly vulnerable. Nine have died this year from the disease.
It is why newborn vaccines and the pregnancy vaccine for whooping cough (which passes protective antibodies onto the baby while still in the womb) are so important, but…
More vulnerable to infection
Another idea is that even if there was no change to the bugs circulating, we have become more susceptible to them because our overall health is ropey after austerity, a pandemic and a cost of living crisis.
Around two million people
report having, external Long Covid, there has been a surge in the numbers of people with
long-term health problems and the NHS
has a mammoth waiting list.
Prof Cruickshank says stress makes the immune system “less able to function” and sedentary lifestyles and bad diets were causing “metabolic inflammation”.
“This is where our immune system has got out of balance and this makes us less able to deal effectively with threats,” she says.
“A lot of us are malnourished and missing out on key nutrients that are really important for your immune system”.
So infections that our bodies may have easily cleared in the past may be causing more intense symptoms now.
Hay fever
If you’re feeling grotty with a runny nose, itchy throat and bouts of sneezing then it may be your immune system reacting to pollen rather than an infection.
“If you’re unlucky enough like me to have hay fever, that’s not going to make you feel particularly wonderful either,” she says.
The Met Office, external says climate change has the potential to affect hay fever by increasing the pollen-season and the intensity of the pollen – essentially, making hay fever worse and last longer.
This is a long-term trend, but Prof Cruickshank says this could explain feeling “a little bit worse” this summer.
Summer colds are nothing new
The phrase “summer cold” was not coined in 2024.
Prof Ball says that as well as the other factors above, we may also be more on edge about coughs and colds after developing a “heightened” response due to the pandemic.
In 2019 nobody was thinking "is that Covid?" when a colleague has a raking cough or "do I need to buy a Covid test?” when feeling ropey ahead of a holiday flight or visiting elderly relatives.
“People are just a little bit more aware of sniffles and things that, maybe pre-Covid, they just got on with life,” says Prof Ball.
Covid is still Covid, but maybe we don't need to fret so much about an old-fashioned summer sniffle.
Full article -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjm9gez8e8mo
