If you have a history of pollen allergies, make sure your treatment plan is current and that you have medications on hand for when you need them. Further, although there’s no link between allergies and increased risk of COVID, pollen exposure can actually weaken the body’s immunity against COVID. Protecting yourselfĬontrolling allergy symptoms can help to prevent absences from work and school, and potentially facilitate earlier identification of COVID symptoms, in combination with testing. If your pollen allergy symptoms seem worse than usual, or you have one or more of the distinguishing symptoms above, it’s advisable to take a rapid COVID test. A fever isn’t a symptom of hay fever, but could indicate COVID or another respiratory infection. Similarly, the loss of smell and taste in pollen allergies results from a blocked nose, so if you have this symptom without a blocked nose, it could be more likely to be COVID. For example, COVID-related coughing is commonly persistent and dry, whereas a cough associated with hay fever is more “tickly”, due to mucus from the nose presenting in the throat.
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Muscle aches and pains are not associated with pollen allergies.ĭifferences can also be seen within some symptoms of pollen allergies and COVID. Muscle ache: COVID-related muscle pains can range from being mild to quite debilitating, especially when they occur alongside fatigue. It’s not associated with pollen allergies. So if you have a fever, in combination with other symptoms, you may have COVID or another respiratory infection.ĭiarrhoea, vomiting and nausea: Diarrhoea in particular can be an early sign of COVID, starting on the first day of infection and often getting worse from there. Itchy eyes: Itchy, red, watery or puffy eyes are a common sign of pollen allergies, but are not associated with COVID.įever or chills: A high temperature is not a sign of pollen allergies, but it’s a fairly common COVID symptom. COVID symptoms vs hay fever symptomsĪlthough there are several overlapping symptoms, there are a few key symptoms that may help you distinguish between COVID and hay fever. So it’s very possible someone might dismiss COVID as the onset of their usual allergies. These symptoms can all affect people with pollen allergies. The latest data from the UK’s ZOE app, which tracks people’s self-reported COVID symptoms, shows the most commonly reported symptoms of COVID are now a sore throat, followed by headache, cough, blocked nose and runny nose. At the same time, this could actually increase confusion between COVID and other illnesses or allergies. Of course, it’s a good thing that people generally aren’t getting as sick with COVID. This is due to a combination of factors including increased immunity from vaccines and prior infections, and the evolution of new variants of the virus. Notably, we’re now often seeing milder COVID symptoms compared with earlier in the pandemic. This could lead people to mistake COVID for allergies, in turn exacerbating the spread of COVID in the community.
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Although seasonal allergies are commonplace for many people, there’s significant overlap between COVID and hay fever symptoms.