SA Covid-19 alert as flu season makes a comeback: Can you get both?

SA‘s first full-blown flu season in years is at risk of mixing with new Covid-19 variants - so are the symptoms for flu different to Covid?

South Australia faces a “perfect storm” from its first flu season in three years mixed with new Covid-19 variants, SA’s top doctor warns.

Latest SA Health figures show 187 influenza A cases this year, which is almost five times more than 40 patients in 2021.

Separate data shows 898 Covid reinfection cases, or 0.22 per cent of 416,000 cases.

Chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said that although many symptons were similar for Covid and the flu, there were a few differences.

The main Covid symptom that set it apart from the flu was loss of taste and smell, “which sort of sets it aside to other things”.

“The one symptom that seems to be quite specific for Covid is that loss of sense of taste and smell.

“With Covid there’s often (also) this brain fog described with some people for quite a long period of time,” she said.

“The other thing is we’ve also noted with Covid is some people can really have quite obvious abdominal symptoms.

“So feeling ill and vomiting and diarrhoea, which is not necessarily associated with influenza.”

She urged people to get their flu jab and to be triple vaccinated for Covid after latest figures showed more 373,000 eligible adults have failed to get their booster shot.

“I can’t imagine how unwell you would feel if you ended up with both flu and Covid either at the same time or one after the other,” she said.

Chief Public Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: David Mariuz

“It’s perfectly possible for that to happen. When you’re thinking about your Covid vaccine, please also think of your flu (jab).

“It’s fair to say that if we didn’t have a vaccine, it could be horrendous.

“Vaccines are available. So that’s the best way to protect ourselves and … avoid having that perfect storm.”

In a new alert, SA Health this week revealed special genome testing had found two Omicron variants, BA. 4 and BA. 5, in the state for the first time during the pandemic.

Professor Spurrier said it was too early to say if the strains, found in two foreign travellers from South Africa in the past fortnight, were more contagious or severe in Covid patients. The professor, who briefed cabinet’s Emergency Management Council on the variants late on Monday, said there was no immediate advice for imposing new restrictions or a return of masks in public.

She said authorities were watching “very closely” amid concerns of increased spread at the start of term 2 classes and days after close-contact isolation rules were scrapped.

“There’s no reason to believe these vaccines shouldn’t cover BA. 4 or BA. 5, particularly around hospitalisation and severity of this disease,” Prof Spurrier said.

“My understanding is that in South Africa, where these variants were first described, they haven’t changed any of their public health measures either.”

In the past fortnight SA Health has recorded wildly fluctuating daily case and hospital admission data.

Seven more patients were admitted to intensive care in the past week. Last night, 17 patients were in ICU and two remained in induced comas on ventilators.

Premier Peter Malinauskas said: “We don’t have any reason to believe we need to change the current Covid management settings.”