As cases of the highly contagious omicron variant have surged across the world, a new COVID term has entered popular culture: “flurona.”

According to Riverside Health System, the word “flurona” itself does not indicate a distinct disease or COVID-19 variant. It is a newly coined term that describes a co-infection where one person is infected simultaneously with COVID-19 and influenza A or B (the “flu”).

Is this condition new?

In early January, Israeli health officials reported that two young pregnant women had tested positive for both the coronavirus and the flu. Local and global media outlets erroneously stated that this was the first dual case in the world, and they dubbed the condition “flurona.”

However, although the name flurona is new, the phenomenon of co-infection with COVID-19 and influenza is not. Some cases of co-infection appeared long before the term flurona was coined.

For example, The Atlantic reported about an incident in 2020 in which a man entered a ho...