Runny noses and congestion are a fixture of the winter months — but a respiratory infection in August when you’re counting on soaking up rays by Barton Springs? That just feels wrong.
Yet it’s not uncommon for patients to come in asking about a “summer cold” going around Austin, said Dr. Michael Stefanowicz, associate chief medical officer at CommUnityCare Health Centers. It’s even been a recent topic of intrigue on the Austin subreddit.
“What this is, in fact, is likely a confluence of different kinds of infections that may have a seasonal pattern at times — yes, COVID being one of them,” Stefanowicz said.
When it comes to respiratory symptoms like cough, runny nose, headache and sore throat, there are a lot of viral and bacterial infections that can be the culprit. In Central Texas, you can’t rule out pollen either.
Dr. Tina Philip, a primary care doctor in Round Rock, said she's seen an uptick in sore throat in particular at her practice over the past few weeks. She's seen positive tests for COVID and even some isolated flu cases this summer — but she said often patients aren't testing positive for anything specific.
"There definitely are a lot of viral illnesses that are floating around," Philip said.
Traditionally, cold and flu activity tend to pick up during the fall and winter. But COVID-19 doesn’t necessarily follow the same pattern. Over the last several years, COVID activity has peaked in both the summer and winter months.
Heather Cooks-Sinclair, chief epidemiologist for Austin Public Health, said that seasonal pattern is something that public health professionals are still working to understand. After all, it's only been around since 2019. It takes several years for a novel disease to settle into predictable patterns, she said.
“We're talking really three years of data to really kind of get trends, and that's just not enough information to really get a good feel for what our year-to-year trends are going to be for that disease," Cooks-Sinclair said.
With more folks testing at home for COVID-19 — and fewer folks testing overall — public health leaders aren’t able to track positivity rates for the illness as closely as they used to. However, they can get a pretty good idea of how much COVID there is in a community by tracking the presence of the disease in local wastewater.
As of Aug. 9, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show very high levels of COVID-19 in Texas wastewater. Specific wastewater sites in Travis County and Hays County also showed very high levels. By contrast, data from the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute show low levels of COVID-19 in wastewater — but that data is less up-to-date, ending on July 21. Austin Public Health, which often relies on the TEPHI data, said it is investigating the discrepancy between the two reports.
Although the CDC is reporting high wastewater levels in Travis County, the agency also reports low numbers of patients visiting local emergency rooms with COVID-19. That’s a sign that the strain currently circulating is tending to produce more mild symptoms, Stefanowicz said.
Likewise, he said, there hasn’t actually been a big uptick in positive COVID tests at CommUnityCare clinics.
“But that's not the whole picture,” Stefanowicz said. “Community members tend to be less inclined to actually seek medical attention for mild symptoms overall. They may be less inclined to even self-test at times as well.”
Stefanowicz said it’s worth self-testing or visiting a medical provider to get a test if you have COVID-like symptoms. For older adults and medically vulnerable people in particular, it provides an opportunity to get treatment that can lessen the impact of the illness. People are also more likely to take appropriate steps to avoid getting others sick — like masking and staying home from work — if they know it’s not just a case of cedar fever.
Stefanowicz also recommends discussing the COVID vaccine with your doctor if it’s been a while since your last shot.
