'Flurona' Is A Combo Of COVID With The Flu & Multiple Cases Have Been Reported

It’s the mashup that no one wants: COVID-19 and the seasonal flu.

Health officials in Israel and the U.S. are reporting some rare cases of “flurona,” a combination of the coronavirus and influenza that affects a person at the same time.

Israel found both viruses in an unvaccinated 30-something pregnant woman this week, CNN reports. The woman had mild symptoms and was in good condition when she was released from hospital.

Dr. Arnon Vizhnitser, who runs the gynecology department at the hospital where the case was spotted, said there was nothing especially unusual about the combo.

"The disease is the same disease," he told the Times of Israel. "They're viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract."

A testing site in Los Angeles also reported its first co-infection of COVID and the flu on Wednesday. The case was detected over the weekend in a teenager returning home from a trip to Mexico, NBC Los Angeles reports.

The boy had mild symptoms and no one else in his family had both viruses, CBS Los Angeles reports.

Another child tested positive for both viruses at Texas Children's Hospital this week, although the patient was sent home to recover, USA Today reports.

"This is one confirmed case," Dr. Jim Versalovic, co-leader of the hospital's COVID-19 team, said at a news conference. "We'll be working with our colleagues across the country to see if there are more cases and whether we will see a distinct pattern."

The key word with flurona is "co-infection," because there's no evidence that the two viruses have actually combined into one, as the name implies. Instead, they just happen to infect someone at the same time because seasonal flus are still out there.

Researchers have actually been studying co-infections involving COVID and the flu since the early days of the pandemic. And while doctors do worry about a "twindemic" of two diseases at once, there's no evidence that that's what is happening, the Washington Post reports.

In other words, "flurona" is the 2022 term for the two viruses in one person, but they've been hitting patients at the same time since 2020.