Sore throat, runny nose, cough, chest congestion, fever, chills, body aches… as we enter the cold-weather season, all of these unpleasant symptoms are making the rounds right now in one form or another.

But exactly what do you have? What can you do to ease the discomfort and maybe get better faster? And can you do anything to keep from getting sick in the first place?

Most of what’s going around, according to Gayle Mendoza, deputy communications director for the Philadelphia Department of Health, are respiratory viruses – and aside from the common cold, there are several. These include flu; COVID-19; pneumonia; and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Mendoza, a nurse and public health professional, notes that in Philadelphia there has been a general uptick in visits to hospitals and city health centers – but the season is young.

Take flu, for example. Flu symptoms, it should be said from the start, are similar to symptoms for other respiratory illnesses.

“It can include body, muscle and joint aches, headaches, fever, and overall just not feeling well. Many people have sore throat associated with it. If you’re feeling quite bad, it can at times be the flu,” Mendoza said. Flu, she adds, also mimics other respiratory illnesses in that it is “spread mostly through the air, and less commonly, you might catch it from touching surfaces that a person with flu has touched as well.”

Right now, Temple doctors are seeing “an awful lot of flu A in our patient population,” said Dr. Jamie Garfield, professor of thoracic medicine and surgery at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. She is also a spokesperson for the American Lung Association. Influenza A is the most common type. (There are also types B, C and D.)

The elderly and people with chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes and heart or lung disease are especially vulnerable, she said. Pregnant women, too, are vulnerable, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Rest, drinking fluids and taking a pain reliever or fever reducer like acetaminophen or ibuprofen are your best day-to-day solutions, said Mendoza, but don’t forget Tamiflu, a prescription antiviral medication that treats influenza A and B.

Of course, she added, your best course of action is the flu vaccine, which can prevent flu or, if you get flu, lesson the possibility of serious illness or hospitalization. Your symptoms will be milder. And it’s not too late to get it.

“It’s never too late,” Mendoza said. “Getting your flu shot is still absolutely helpful.”

Another respiratory illness making the rounds is COVID-19, but strictly speaking, it’s always around. “COVID does not have the seasonality that flu does,” according to Dr. Garfield. That said, at this time of year, “people are out in the cold and inside in crowded spaces, so I would say that there are more COVID infections at this time of year compared to over the summer.”

Flu is number one in terms of most prominent respiratory infections, she added, and COVID-19 is number two. (RSV is number three. We’ll speak about that in a moment.)

COVID-19 symptoms are similar to those of flu, according to the CDC, but they can be more severe. You might lose your taste of sense and smell. The virus spreads more easily, but symptoms may take longer to appear than with flu. A COVID-19 infection can also develop into “long COVID,” a chronic condition in which a wide range of symptoms can last three months or longer. Anyone, including kids, can develop long COVID, according to the CDC.

COVID-19 spreads like the flu. Similar age groups are vulnerable, including people 50 or older, as well as babies under 6 months, according to the Mayo Clinic.

If you want to find out which you have, flu or COVID-19, says Mendoza, testing kits are now available that test for both. A helpful two-fer.

As with flu and Tamiflu, there’s also a prescription antiviral medication, Paxlovid, for mild to moderate COVID-19. For people with high risk factors for developing severe COVID-19, it can reduce the severity of symptoms and the possibility of hospitalization.

And just as with flu, as most people know, there’s a vaccine for that – if you get people to bare an arm for it.

And that’s a big problem, according to Dr. Garfield. In fact, vaccinations for any of the respiratory illnesses – flu, COVID-19, pneumonia and respiratory syncytial virus – are incredibly low.

“I just had a clinic, and my patient was up to date with her flu vaccine, up to date with her pneumococcal vaccine, up to date with her RSV vaccine, but hadn’t gotten her COVID vaccine since 2022,” Dr. Garfield said. “And when patients ask, I do recommend it. COVID still has the highest hospitalization and mortality rate of the viruses we know about. But there’s a lot of mistrust and it doesn’t seem like there’s much I can say that can convince our patients to be vaccinated against COVID in the same way and to the same degree as people are willing to be vaccinated for influenza, RSV and pneumococcal pneumonia.”

And actually, even that might be damning with faint praise.

According to Dr. Garfield, these are flu and COVID-19 vaccination rates nationwide by percentage, according to the most recent (2024) statistics: 34-35 percent for flu; and 17-18 percent for COVID-19.

There is one other common respiratory malady that you might run into this cold-weather season: Respiratory syncytial virus.

RSV tends to affect the very young or older adults, says the Health Department’s Mendoza. “The people who get hospitalized for it are infants or babies and older adults,” she said.

Symptoms of RSV can be similar to those for other respiratory viruses, she adds. Treatment is much the same. Vaccination is your best bet to prevent it or reduce its severity if you do get it. Vaccination is also recommended for pregnant women, she says, to keep from passing RSV along to their babies.

Nearly everyone gets RSV by age 2, and you can get it more than once in your life, according to the American Lung Association. RSV season typically starts in the fall; winter is the peak, the CDC says.

No matter which viral illness rears its ugly head this season, there are overlooked but proven non-pharmaceutical ways to keep from getting them. Dr. Garfield recommends these three:

Tip number 1: Social distancing, a COVID-19 holdover, can help. Avoid crowded spaces if you can.

Tip number 2: “There’s nothing wrong with masking,” Dr. Garfield said. “We learned during COVID that the rates of all infections plummeted [when people wore masks]. Some of that had to do with people staying at home, so they were around fewer people. But the majority of it, I think, had to do with the practice of masking that we all got used to and that some people still do. So, if you’re in crowded spaces, masking absolutely will reduce the likelihood that you will contract a respiratory viral infection from someone around you.”

Tip number 3: “Hand hygiene is always important,” Dr. Garfield said. “So, if you’re touching things like doors and railings that other people are always touching, wash your hands before touching your face.”