What is the difference between the flu and flu-like illness? What you should know:
There are different strains of flu, including influenza A and B. In January 2020, the CDC warned an early season pediatric influenza B is circulating -- something that hasn’t happened in 27 years. That strain is causing serious illnesses in the South in particular and is blamed for one death as of early January.
Michael Ison, MD, a professor of infectious diseases and organ transplantation at Northwestern University in Chicago, says regardless of the cause, treatment is similar. William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, says tests can also be expensive and unreliable, and many doctors only use them when they aren’t sure of a diagnosis, which is rarely the case during a flu outbreak.
“A lot of patients want to go home with antibiotics, but a flu-like illness means it is more than likely being caused by a virus, so you don’t need an antibiotic,” says Ison, the Northwestern professor. “Getting an antibiotic you don’t need can cause antibiotic resistance to develop, and then if you get pneumonia, for example, we may not have good drugs or any drugs to treat the infection.
“We track influenza-like illness across the country, and we know when lab-confirmed flu goes up, , how long people stay in the ICU, and the amount of time people spend in a hospital from the flu.
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