How Long Are People Contagious With The Flu

How Are Colds And Flu Spread

How Long Are You Contagious With The Flu?

Colds and flu are most commonly spread through sneezing, coughing and touching contaminated surfaces.

Air: Cold and flu viruses can travel up to six feet in airborne water droplets from a persons breath when they talk, sneeze or cough. If you inhale one of these water droplets or it lands in your mouth, nose or eyes, you may become infected. Cold and flu viruses tend to spread more easily in cold, dry air.3
Touch: Surprisingly, viruses can survive for some time on surfaces, especially on hard, smooth surfaces such as metal and plastic.4 Recent research suggests the flu virus can survive for up to nine hours on hard surfaces and up to four hours on porous items such as clothes or soft toys.5 If you touch an infected surface such as a door handle, light switch, computer keyboard, cup or glassware, clothing or tissues a cold or flu virus can pass into your body if you touch your eyes, nose or mouth afterwards.2
Close or Direct Contact: Kissing, hugging or shaking hands can pass the virus directly from one person to another.1

How Colds And Flu Spread

Colds are most contagious in the first 2 to 4 days after symptoms start. But they can spread up to a few weeks after that. Your symptoms will usually show up 2 to 3 days after you’ve been infected, so you may not know you’re sick when you first get the virus.

You can give other people your cold just by being around them. Your sneezes and coughs can send virus particles as far as 12 feet through the air where they can land in someone’s mouth or nose or be inhaled into the lungs. Others can also catch your cold if they touch you or something you’ve come into contact with and then touch their mouth or nose.

Like the common cold, the flu is caused by a virus, and it’s likely to spread through coughs, sneezes, or even talking. Those actions can send droplets up to 6 feet away. It’s also possible to get the flu by touching something with the virus on it and then touching your mouth or nose, but that’s less likely.

You can be contagious before you even know you’re sick. The virus usually enters your body 1 to 4 days before you have any symptoms, and you can give it to someone a day before you feel anything up to 5 to 7 days after. And kids are contagious even longer. They can spread the virus for another week.

Some people never show symptoms but can still give it to others.

Treatment And Home Remedies

If youre sick, be sure to drink plenty of liquids and get plenty of rest. You can also take over-the-counter pain and fever relievers, such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen , to help relieve your symptoms.

Stay at home while youre sick and for at least 24 hours after your fever has gone down.

In some cases, your doctor may prescribe an antiviral medication. Antiviral medications can reduce the length of your illness and may help prevent complications. They dont kill the influenza virus, however.

Antiviral medications must be taken within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms in order to be effective.

What Causes The Flu In A Child

The flu is caused by flu viruses. Flu viruses are divided into 3 types:

Influenza types A and B. These 2 types of viruses cause widespread illness almost every winter. They often lead to more people needing to go to the hospital, and more people dying from the flu. Public health officials focus on stopping the spread of types A and B. One of the reasons the flu remains a problem is because the viruses change often. This means that people are exposed to new types of the viruses each year.
Influenza type C. This type of virus causes a very mild respiratory illness or no symptoms at all. It does not cause epidemics. It does not have the severe public health impact that influenza types A and B do.

A flu virus is often passed from child to child through sneezing or coughing. The virus can also live for a short time on surfaces. This includes doorknobs, toys, pens or pencils, keyboards, phones and tablets, and countertops. It can also be passed through shared eating utensils and drinking. Your child can get a flu virus by touching something that was touched by an infected with person, and then touching his or her mouth, nose, or eyes.

When To Stay Home

When deciding whether to stay home, consider your symptoms. If you have a mild tickle in your throat or a stuffy nose, you should be able to go to work. Allergy symptoms also dont need to keep you from work. Theyre not contagious.

If youre really coughing and sneezing or you feel generally miserable, stay home. Also, avoid the office if youre vomiting or have diarrhea.

Get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, and wait for your symptoms to subside. The

Your doctor may recommend several treatments for your illness. Its important to consider when these treatments may be helpful and their potential side effects.

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How Can I Tell If Im Still Contagious

It can be hard to tell if youre still contagious even after youve recovered from the flu. Its possible to have the flu for a few days, feel better, and still be contagious days later. In other words, just because you feel better, this doesnt mean you cant pass the virus on to someone else. The best way to know if youre still contagious is to count how many days it has been since the day you got sick. If its been seven days or longer since you first started getting symptoms, you probably arent contagious anymore.

The flu is contagious regardless of whether or not you have a fever. Youll still be contagious for five to seven days even if your fever breaks early on. The time it takes to no longer be contagious is just a matter of where you are on the seven-day timeline.

Preventing The Flu After Exposure

Although there are various products and remedies that may claim to help prevent illness once you’ve been exposed to the flu, none of them have proven to be effective. Your best bet to prevent the flu is to get your annual flu vaccine. Although it’s not 100 percent effective at preventing the flu, it gives you a much better chance of avoiding the illness than anything else.

If you are exposed to someone with the flu, avoid close contact with the person and wash your hands frequently.

Vitamin C: Although vitamin C is widely used and has many benefits, there is no scientific proof that it will help you avoid an illness such as the flu or a cold.
Humidifiers: Evidence suggests that viruses such as the cold and flu spread more easily in cold, dry air. This is one of the reasons that they’re more common during the winter. Running a humidifier in your home during the winter can help keep your nasal passages moist. And while there’s no guarantee that this will prevent you from getting sick, it can’t hurt .
Antiviral medications: If you’re at high risk for complications from the flu and you know you were exposed to it, talk to your healthcare provider about taking antiviral medications. It can help prevent influenza in some people and will reduce the severity of the symptoms in those who do get it.

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Am I Contagious With A Fever

People need to be fever free for 24 hours without the help of a fever-reducing medication before they return to work or school, Pittman said. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, school nurses are advised to send children home that have a temperature of 100.4 degrees or greater. The same rule of thumb goes for adults too. You need to stay home if you have had a temperature of 100.4 degrees in the past day.

A low-grade fever is any temperature above 98.6 degrees but below 100.4 degrees. Pittman says low-grade fevers are a good thing, because your body is actively fighting an infection.

If you have a low-grade fever, and you feel fine, you can participate in your usual day-to-day activities, but you need to listen to your body. She recommends if you start to feel achy, begin to sweat or develop a headache, then take your temperature again, then go home. The same recommendation goes for children.

Can I Exercise If Ive Got A Cold Or The Flu

How Long Is the Flu Contagious?

If youre in doubt about whether or not you should keep exercising when youre unwell, use the above vs. below the neck rule.

While some mild to moderate exercise is generally okay while youve got above the neck cold symptoms such as sneezing, a runny nose or a sore throat, its best not to do it at a gym where you might infect others. If you have below the neck flu-like symptoms such as fever, chest congestion, cough, muscle aches or nausea, then you shouldnt exercise at all until you have fully recovered.9

If you do choose to exercise when youre feeling sick, try not to push yourself too hard. Tone down the exercise routines that you normally do or try out some light exercises that can be done from inside the house. Avoid working out in cold temperatures, as cold air can further irritate a sore throat or a cough. Be sure to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water and liquids. If you start to feel unwell during a workout, listen to your body and stop exercising immediately.

If you want to be absolutely sure about whether or not you should be working out in your condition, check to see if you should exercise or rest based on your symptoms.

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The Symptoms And Stages Of The Flu

Exposure to the flu happens when you breathe in the virus from the air. This can occur when someone with the flu has coughed, sneezed, or breathed near you. Exposure may also happen if you touch your eyes, nose, or mouth after touching something with the virus on it. Heres what happens in your body after youre exposed.

How Long Are You Contagious With The Crud

How longcontagious

. In this regard, how long are you contagious with viral pharyngitis?

Bacterial pharyngitis usually is also contagious as long as symptoms are present but, in contrast to viral pharyngitis, antibiotics may reduce the time span of infection, and the individual becomes no longer contagious about 24 hours after taking an effective antibiotic.

Beside above, is the crud viral or bacterial? Crud, as many are calling it, is going around the U.S. right now. Whatever it is, it’s not the flu, and it is being diagnosed by most doctors as a bacterial infection, however antibiotics don’t seem to be helping.

Also asked, how do you know when your cold is contagious?

Sneezing, fever, and a hacking cough are all signs that you could be contagious. Even if you feel all right, your symptoms â or lack thereof â could be deceiving. Even with mild illnesses, you can spread germs, too.

Is strep contagious during the incubation period?

Strep throat is highly contagious and is most commonly spread via direct person-to-person contact. The incubation period for strep throat is two to five days.

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First A Refresher On The Flu

To understand the flu’s incubation period, it’s first a good idea to go over the virus itself. Influenza, aka the flu, is a contagious respiratory infection caused by several flu viruses that infect the nose, throat, and lungs, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases .

Each year, the flu makes millions of people sick and causes thousands of hospitalizations and flu-related deaths. During the 2019-2020 flu season, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there were up to 56 million illnesses, 740,000 hospitalizations, and 62,000 deaths from the flu in the US.

Anyone can get the flu and spread it to otherseven healthy people, the NIAID says. The virus can be especially risky for certain groups, including the very young, elderly, pregnant women, and people with certain medical conditions, which is why it’s so scary that you can have influenza and not know it.

People who get infected with the flu may develop symptoms like fever, chills, muscle aches, coughing, congestion, headache, and fatigue for about a week. Most flu patients get better within two weeks, but some people can develop serious complications, like pneumonia, NIAID says.

How Long Am I Contagious

How long should I stay home after being sick? Often, this question comes with an internal back and forth about whether youor your childrenshould stay home or not. Whether a child or an adult, Alison Pittman, PhD, RN, CPN, CNE, clinical assistant professor at the Texas A& M College of Nursing, gives some basic guidelines on how to tell if you should stay home with a short-term, possibly contagious illness.

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How Stomach Flu Spreads

Stomach bugs are spread through close contact. Sharing utensils or food and not washing hands frequently are common reasons that the viruses spread through families. It sounds gross, but small particles of stool from diarrhea or vomit can be passed from person to person and because they are so small, you don’t realize it until you are sick.

How Long Is The Flu Contagious

Flu symptoms also generally last up to 10 days, depending on the individual.

A person can expect to be able to spread the flu one day before their symptoms begin and then for up to seven days after becoming ill.

The influenza virus, or flu, is a highly contagious respiratory virus that can infect people of all age groups. The severity of an influenza infection can depend on the person.

Symptoms can range from mild in some people to life-threatening in certain at-risk groups, such as older adults.

Viruses can spread through a process called viral shedding. When a virus finishes its replication cycle within a cell, it releases new viruses. These new viruses can then infect more cells and the body can expel them to transmit to other people.

These viruses exit the body in a number of ways, such as mixing with the mucus and saliva. These substances then find their way back into the open environment through things such as coughing and sneezing.

One study in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal found that children have a longer period of viral shedding before the onset of symptoms when compared to adults.

The study also found children aged 05 years had the longest period of viral shedding after symptoms had resolved.

Symptoms are the main difference between the flu and a cold. Flu symptoms are more severe than the effects of a cold. They also affect the whole body. In comparison, the common cold typically only causes symptoms in the upper airway.

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How Contagious Is The Flu

Did you know that a person with the flu can infect someone up to 6 feet away? Most people believe that the flu can only be spread through a cough or sneeze, but in reality, thats not the case. Experts believe that the flu can actually be spread via respiratory droplets by simply speaking or breathing through the mouth, making it super contagious.

Thats why its so important to recover from the flu at home when youre only experiencing mild symptoms. The CDC recommends avoiding contact with others during recovery to avoid spreading the virus. There are exceptions, however if any of the following apply to you, you should seek medical attention:

Your symptoms are moderate to severe
Youre in a high-risk group, such as young children, pregnant women, older adults, or people with certain pre-existing conditions
Youre worried about your illness

Click here to read up on the emergency warning signs of the flu in children and adults. If you or your child are experiencing any of these symptoms, seek urgent medical care. But if your illness is mild, recovering at home will keep others in your community safe from contracting the virus.

How Long Is The Common Cold Contagious

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Like the flu virus, a cold can be contagious from a few days before you start showing symptoms until you fully recover . You will usually be more contagious during the first two or three days, when your symptoms are likely to be at their worst.6

You will usually be more contagious during the first two or three days, when your symptoms are likely to be at their worst.6

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If I Have The Flu When Am I Most Contagious

If you have the flu, you are most contagious in the first 3 to 4 days after starting to feel sick.

But keep in mind that you can also be contagious 24 hours before you have symptoms. This means you can spread the flu before you even know you are sick.

You can also spread the flu for up to a weekafter getting sick. And some people can be contagious for even longer, like children and people who are immunocompromised.