When is rhinovirus contagious

Home Health Information GermWatch. Share this page Facebook Twitter. Diagnosis and Treatment Providers usually diagnose rhinovirus by taking a medical history and doing a physical exam. What can I do today? Give special attention to post-potty and pre-meal hand washing.

Regularly wipe down tables, toys, and other objects and surfaces. Cover your sneezes and coughs. Use a tissue once, then throw it away and wash your hands.

Fast breathing more than 40 times a minute or very difficult breathing retractions, or using the stomach muscles when breathing. Fever that lasts longer than 3 days — or fever higher than Fussiness, poor eating, sleepiness or low energy in a baby. Signs of an ear infection — complaining about ear pain, tugging or rubbing the ear, etc. Jan 13, Cedars-Sinai Staff. Common flu symptoms include cough, fever, aches, and fatigue and flu symptoms usually come on faster than cold symptoms.

Cold symptoms are more likely to come on gradually and usually include cough, sneezing, runny nose, and sore throat. The contagious period for the flu begins about 1 day before symptoms start and can last as long as days from when you first felt sick.

Both the flu and a cold are generally spread through the air, by close contact, or contaminated surfaces. To help prevent the spread of illness, it is important to wash your hands, eating utensils, and linens frequently and thoroughly. Grein also recommends covering your nose and mouth when you cough or sneeze, cleaning your hands often with soap and warm water or an alcohol-based hand rub, and avoiding touching your face as much as possible.

Skip to content. Unfortunately, it's during that time when you may be most contagious, Jazmine Sutton, MD, a hospital medicine specialist at Cleveland Clinic, tells Health. Those symptoms Dr. Sutton is referring to are just typical cold symptoms: sore throat , runny nose, coughing, sneezing, headaches, and body aches. Once those cold symptoms show up, they can last anywhere from a few days to up to two weeks, per MedlinePlus—and in the majority of cases, a cold is most often not contagious after the first week.

But that's not always a hard-and-fast rule; as long as you're still coughing or showing symptoms of any kind, you may still be contagious. Sutton says. And in rare cases, Dr. Sutton says, you can still be infectious even after symptoms resolve, due to something called viral shedding, or when a virus replicates in the body and makes its way out into the environment. Basically, your best bet for protecting yourself and others during flu season: Continue taking the necessary preventative measures like hand washing and physically distancing yourself from sick people.