Up to half the people who get swine flu never develop a fever, and some suffer from gastrointestinal symptoms as well as more standard flu symptoms.
The symptoms of 2009 H1N1 flu can be like those of ordinary flu, but often they are not. You may suffer from nausea, stomach cramps and diarrhoea in addition to the usual suspects. And in , people never develop a fever.
聯In up to half of all cases, people never get a fever. Yet the official line often remains: if you don鈥檛 get a fever, it鈥檚 not swine flu聰
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This shouldn鈥檛 be surprising: found that half of people deliberately infected with ordinary H1N1 did not get fever either. Even those with severe cases of 2009 flu may not. 鈥淭en per cent of our patients had no fever when admitted,鈥� says intensive care specialist Anand Kumar of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Worryingly, this message has not got through to all doctors, or those creating aids. In many cases, the official line remains: if you don鈥檛 have fever, you don鈥檛 have flu.
This is dangerous because if you don鈥檛 know you have swine flu you won鈥檛 watch for : shortness of breath, chest pain or blue lips. People with these symptoms should start on an antiviral such as Tamiflu at once, says Kumar, even if they have had symptoms for more than two days, and stay on it for more than five days. This runs counter to the usual rules for Tamiflu, but those only apply to people who are not seriously ill, he says. 鈥淭he critically ill are much different.鈥�
Even then, people may have trouble getting Tamiflu if they are not in a recognised risk group or if they do not test positive for swine flu virus. However, standard swab tests have proved unreliable in severe cases, says Kumar, possibly because the viral infection is deep in the lungs rather than in the throat. In these cases, a test revealing low blood oxygen may alert doctors.
Read more: Swine flu: Eight myths that could endanger your life
