Flu and COVID-19 double infection poses major risk

The upcoming flu season may worsen the novel coronavirus pandemic, experts warned, after studies revealed that coinfection with influenza and COVID-19 could lead to a higher risk of death.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool found that symptoms in mice with coinfection of influenza virus and COVID-19 were worse than the individual infections.

The results, which were published this week on the preprint server bioRxiv, follow on from a United Kingdom study released last month that found human patients with coinfection had up to six times higher risk of death than the general population.