The Common Cold Could Offer Temporary Protection Against COVID

No one wants to catch the common cold, but it’s certainly better than a COVID-19 infection for more reasons than one.

With a cold, there’s no chance of developing long COVID, much less of a likelihood of severe illness and, according to recent research published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the common cold may actually protect you from a COVID-19 infection.

The six-month-long study was conducted by experts across the country, but doctors from National Jewish Health in Colorado led the research.

For the study, researchers collected a total of 10,493 nasal swabs from 1,156 people in the United States, both children and adults. Nasal swabs were collected every two weeks and then tested for 21 respiratory pathogens, including for COVID-19 via a PCR test.

Researchers found that people who had a rhinovirus infection in the past 30 days (rhinovirus is the virus that most often causes the common cold) were 48% less likely to develop a COVID-19 infection.

Children had more frequent rhinovirus infections than adults, and, thus, more genes that protected them against a COVID-19 infection. This may be one reason children get sick with COVID-19 less often than adults and, generally, have more mild illness, researchers wrote in the study.

For adults and children who did get sick with COVID-19 after having a cold, the amount of virus on the nasal swab was less than those who had COVID-19 but didn’t recently have a cold. A smaller viral load often means less severe symptoms, according to the study.

There are a few reasons a cold may offer some COVID-19 protection, experts told HuffPost.

“Some common colds are caused by coronavirus — not the novel strain that we’ve all dealt with during the pandemic, but other types of coronaviruses,” said Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk, a family physician in Pennsylvania who is not affiliated with the study.

“It certainly stands to reason that the immune system might recognize other coronaviruses as familiar, and therefore make it easier for the immune system to fight them,” she said.

While the coronaviruses that cause colds are, once again, not the same one that causes COVID-19, it would make sense that coronavirus infection would create some protection against COVID-19, Mieses Malchuk added.

“There’s another idea, which is that when you’ve had a lot of inflammation, just immune activity in a given tissue, it actually changes the way that tissue responds to subsequent challenges,” or subsequent infections, in…