'I was at the pharmacy every day with new symptoms. It didn't dawn it was Covid'

Coronavirus is spreading across the country once more – and many people are sharing their symptoms as they grapple with whether to test or not, questioning ‘is it just a cold, or is it Covid?’

The NHS is warning of a ‘tripledemic’ of RSV, Covid and flu which are already spreading. The rise in the trio of illnesses comes as children go back to school and the weather gets colder – with the NHS already having faced months of crisis as demand has skyrocketed following the height of the pandemic.

The winter illness season typically peaks in December and January, but plenty of people are sharing their stories of getting coughs and colds. Many are wondering exactly what they have come down with as the list of symptoms seems to grow longer and longer.

READ MORE: What it's really like to have Covid right now as 'distinctive' XEC variant symptoms spread

The new XEC strain of Covid, which originated in Europe, has now spread to Britain and globally. Research indicates that it is more easily transmitted than previous variants.

Scientists have identified it as a recombinant variant, implying it was formed from two pre-existing strains that an individual may have contracted simultaneously. First identified in Germany last month, XEC is a genetic derivative of Omicron, a highly transmissible Covid-19 variant that became dominant after first appearing in South Africa in 2021.

XEC shares many of the same characteristics as other omicron subvariants, such as spreading easily and causing less severe disease than the earliest SARS-CoV-2 strains. This means that the symptoms may be different from previous years.

Richard Orton, a Bioinformatics Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, told The Conversation media outlet about the