Coronavirus or the Common Flu?

February 26, 2020 UPDATE: The US has confirmed a 15th case of Coronavirus, now called COVID-19. These 15 are in addition to the 45 confirmed cases in the US from patients who were evacuated from endemic areas of China and from the Japan cruise ship.

UPDATE: Northern California has recently become home to the U.S.’s highest concentration of the coronavirus, which is causing concern from residents and medical professionals. We’ve been closely following updates regarding the virus and the CDC’s recommendations for prevention and treatment. Watch the ABC7 News interview with our founding physician and Medical Director Caesar Djavaherian where he discusses prevention strategies and similarities between the common flu.

Similar to prior novel virus outbreaks, the impact of the Wuhan City, China Coronavirus is not well understood at this point. The impact on Americans is even less well understood. Often the fear around dangerous virus outbreaks is greater than the actual impact of the outbreak in areas outside the virus epicenter. This virus, called 2019-nCoV, is in the same family as the SARS and MERS viruses but so far is fortunately proving to be less deadly than those.

During these uncertain times, we need to make sure that the public is educated about common signs, symptoms, treatment options and dangers associated with these viruses. To this end, we have created this easy-to-follow chart comparing influenza with coronavirus so that patients can be aware of the signs and symptoms to look out for.

In terms of sheer numbers of deaths from viruses, influenza remains the biggest killer in the United States and vaccine prevention remains your best protection. However, given the growing global impact and spread of the Coronavirus, we should all be educated for better prevention and to reduce unnecessary fear given that this far there have only been 650 documented cases of this new virus subtype.

Carbon Health’s founding physician and Medical Director Caesar Djavaherian, MD focuses on clinic innovation and providing data-driven care to patients.

Since the Coronavirus was identified in a patient in Washington State, we made changes to our software and clinical workflow to quickly identify patients at highest risk for testing positive for the novel Coronavirus. In our new intake questionnaire, which most patients complete through our App prior to arriving in our clinics, patients who report that they are experiencing fever are asked about their recent travel history. For those at highest risk, meaning that they were recently in Wuhan City China within the past week and are experiencing fever, we will proactively reach out to them via telemedicine and help them determine their risk, as well as guide them through their best course of action.

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