How Does COVID-19 Spread Differently Than The Flu?
Each year, scientists look to the Southern Hemisphere to get a clue as to how flu season up north might play out. The flu season below the equator, which typically runs June through August, gives us an idea of which strains are circulating and how intense the Northern Hemisphere’s flu season, which usually sees an uptick around early November, could be.
This year, the Southern Hemisphere saw a historically inactive flu season with “virtually no influenza circulation,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The reason for this, infectious disease experts say, lies in how similarly COVID-19 and the flu are transmitted and, therefore, prevented. The viruses primarily spread in the same ways. Thanks to all the precautions in place for the coronavirus — like mask-wearing, physical distancing, school closures and teleworking — the flu never really struck this year down under, compared to previous flu seasons.
But there are also some key differences in how the viruses spread. And knowing them could help you prevent the transmission of both and also make it easier to determine which one you have if you do get sick.
Here’s how the transmission modes of the two illnesses compare:
Both spread primarily through respiratory droplets.
The main way COVID-19 spreads from person to person is thought to be through large respiratory droplets expelled from an infected person when they exhale, sneeze, cough, etc. If another person inhales enough of those droplets, there’s a solid chance they’ll get sick, too. That’s quite similar to the flu.
Heidi Zapata, a Yale Medicine infectious disease doctor, said influenza spreads primarily through “tiny spitballs that are generated when we talk, laugh, sneeze, cough, sing.” So a face mask — which has been shown to reduce the respiratory droplets a person expels into the surrounding air and potentially inhales — should lower your risk for the flu just as it does with COVID-19.
