Israel on Thursday confirmed its first case of a patient infected with Covid-19 and influenza simultaneously.
Doctors at Beilinson Hospital in central Israel said the double infection, dubbed “flurona”, was diagnosed in an unvaccinated pregnant woman who was showing mild symptoms.
The patient was released from the hospital on Thursday when she was feeling well.
While some claim that this is the first case of double infection in the world, it seems that such cases have already been observed in the United States as early as the spring of 2020, according to the Times of Israel.
Israeli health officials have suggested that it is likely that many more people have been infected with the two viruses, but have not yet been diagnosed.
The Israeli Center for Disease Control on Wednesday registered nearly 2,000 hospitalized influenza patients.
Faced with these figures, the Ministry of Health urged the population to be vaccinated against the flu and the coronavirus in order to avoid an overload of patients in hospitals.
He also stressed that he would pay special attention to cases of “flurona” to determine whether the combination of the two viruses causes more serious diseases.
Last week, a 31-year-old pregnant woman died in Jerusalem after contracting the flu. A six-year-old child also died in his sleep last month, due to flu-related complications associated with a history of heart disease.