The world is passing through one of the major medical emergency in the form of COVID-19. Almost every country is affected by COVID-19 and sadly taken many lives.
In India monsoon is going on. So there is also an increase in some seasonal diseases especially mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever cases are in rise. Today we will discuss the difference between the symptoms of dengue fever and COVID-19 as many symptoms are represented in both the diseases.
About the diseases:
Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease caused by different serotypes of the dengue virus. Dengue can affect the person in different forms from simply dengue fever to more severe form that is dengue hemorrhagic fever.
COVID-19 is also caused by a virus known as ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2’ (SARS-COV-2) and the disease is named as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020.
Difference between dengue fever and COVID-19:
Both the disease has many common symptoms that can also be differentiated. Let’s have a quick look at it.
- Fever: Dengue infected person has a high-grade fever while COVID-19 has a low-grade fever. But COVID-19 may also present with high-grade fever initially. Later on, low-grade fever may persist for a few days in COVID-19.
- Muscles and joints are more involved in Dengue fever. In COVID-19 usually, joints are not involved except few cases. Severe myalgia and joint pain are common in most cases of dengue fever. Generalized weakness and body ache are more severe in COVID-19 and almost every infected person with COVID-19 who have mild to moderate symptoms have faced generalized weakness and body ache except asymptomatic cases.
- Both the diseases may have skin rashes.
- COVID-19 have more respiratory symptoms like cough and breathlessness in severe cases, while dengue fever has more digestive symptoms like nausea and vomiting.
- In dengue fever, there are no symptoms of loss of taste and smell which is present in many cases of COVID-19.
- Both may have a headache. But in COVID-19 there may be a severe headache which is mostly in frontal or frontoparietal region. While in dengue fever headache is peri-orbital in most cases.
- Both diseases can cause liver damage and can cause changes in liver enzymes such as SGPT or SGOT. But in COVID-19 SGPT or SGOT usually doesn’t increase more than double in most cases, while dengue fever can damage the liver and gallbladder more severely and SGPT or SGOT may increase at much higher levels.
- Dengue fever may have ascites, pleural effusion or pericardial effusion in many cases. While in COVID-19 pleural effusion is rare. It directly affects lungs causing consolidation or pneumonitis like appearance.