By analyzing Fitbit data and self-reported symptoms, researchers from Evidation Health and collaborators analyzed trends in heart rate, step count, and symptom duration between patients with flu and those with COVID-19. While both showed similar-looking spikes in resting heart rate and decreases in average step count, COVID-19 symptoms lasted longer and peaked later.
Contrasting and comparing flu and COVID-19 is important for COVID-19 screening, as current practices often only check for more general symptoms like fever. The study was conducted using Evidation’s app and network, Achievement–a connected cohort comprised of over 4 million individuals nationwide.
The findings confirmed that certain other symptoms are characteristic of COVID but not flu, like shortness of breath and coughing. They also examined the impact of each illness on decreasing daily step count, finding that the impacts lasted much longer for COVID than for flu. This result, as well as reports of long-term fatigue, also hinted at the existence of chronic COVID cases, which had not yet been studied closely at the beginning of the pandemic when this data was gathered.
Source: News Medical
Name of Author: Emily Henderson