Lots of coughing in supermarket today.

[BurntBroccoli]

Not sure if it’s been the hot weather effecting everyone but there were loads of people coughing in the supermarket today. They sounded like the coughs I had when I had COVID which took me ages to recover from so was feeling very paranoid!

Probably pollen? I kept coughing when i visited my (rural) mum recently, she is quite anxious about colds so I had to keep reassuring her I was perfectly well.

Very relieved the bluebells have gone over, they made my eyes absolutely sting this year 😭.Maybe the warm weather is making the plants release more pollen or something?

I’ve got raging hayfever at the moment which is causing me to cough

A couple of weeks ago I walked into my dentists to book an appointment and suddenly lost all manner of normal speech, it was coming out like I’d been strangled and I couldnt stop coughing. Five minutes after I left it was back to normal. Wasn’t covid. People cough for all types of reasons, or no reason at all.

Apologies - that should say New Year’s Eve 2019.

I truly believe Covid was here well before March 2020.

I wiped my dining room windowsill, this afternoon (the window is open most of the time we're home and awake, at the moment) and the cloth was bright yellow. The grooves of my decking are also full of yellow dust.

I get that.

Today was very noticeable that several people had really tickly, hacking coughs.

Ebola is doing the rounds in central Africa. Might be that.

No - coughing is not a symptom of Ebola.

Covid - whether you like it or not is still around.

Yeah actually I agree with that as we lost a friend in the November, very unexpectedly from "pneumonia". But I don't think covid rates are massively high at the moment.

Do understand your concern though.

Yep, I've had a massive respiratory infection and still sound like a 60-year-old miner.

Covid isn't on the increase.
https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/respiratory-viruses/covid-19

Oh really? I’ve never had hay fever before or any sort of pollen reaction - is there something you would recommend or just have to ride it out?

I had streaming nose and eyes for a week, then it turned off like a tap and I've had the irritating cough. Sure it's pollen.

Of course it was here before march, how could it not? It was already present in china and flights were coming in multiple times a day. And it was obvious you meant New Year's Eve, no need to apologise some posters love to be sharp and argumentative.

I’d assume it was hayfever, not covid.

COVID-19 stands for Coronavirus disease discovered in 19. The World Health Organization (WHO) assigned this name to the disease to establish a standard format for future outbreaks, and specifically chose a neutral, non-stigmatizing name to avoid associating the illness with any particular geographic location or group of people.
Here is the breakdown of the name:
CO: Corona
VI: Virus
D: Disease
19: The year the outbreak was first identified (2019)
The actual virus that causes this disease is officially named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), as it is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak.

COVID-19 was first officially recognized and confirmed in the UK on 30 January 2020, when laboratory results returned positive for two Chinese nationals staying at a hotel in York.
The timeline of how these first cases unfolded includes:

• 29 January 2020: Paramedics were called to the Staycity apartment-hotel in York after a University of York student and his mother (who had recently flown in from Wuhan) fell ill.
• 30 January 2020: The positive test results were officially confirmed by Public Health England.
• 31 January 2020: The UK's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty,

While later epidemiological studies suggested the virus may have been circulating in extremely low numbers from international travelers in late 2019, these York cases mark the formal, documented beginning of the pandemic's presence in the UK

It’s hay fever.

So do I. I work in a school with many international pupils and we had a 'mystery virus' which affected probably 20% of the school a month before anyone had heard of covid. Never happened before or since, and I've been there 20+ years.

There’s a cough bug going around our office. It’s knocking people out for a week.

How do they actually know numbers for Covid nowadays? No one tests for it. I have a severe head cold at the moment and suspect it may be COVID. High pressure and severe pain in head and croaky voice, much worse than a normal cold.

Sounds like a sinus infection.

Even if it is Covid, so what?

Depending on where you are, pollen levels have been super high rhe past few days, and has been causing issues for some people who don't necessarily normally suffer from hayfever (eg me!). It's highly likely it is caused by seasonal allergies.

I haven’t got a problem if it is Covid, it’s just stating the numbers are low when how can they possibly know?

Presumably it’s based on hospitalised people, same as the flu etc - they’re not going to include people at home with the flu who don’t go to hospital.

In Germany they test wastewater for COVID, Flu & RSV, which is feels geographically close enough to get a sense of how things are in the UK, too. Currently COVID levels are low: https://infektionsradar.rki.de/en/covid/sewage