All That Coughs Is Not COVID

• Published in: Curēus (Palo Alto, CA) Vol. 14; no. 12; p. e32169
• Main Authors: Patel, Nisha M, Shaines, Matthew, Nori, Priya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Springer Nature B.V 03.12.2022; Cureus
• Subjects: Asthma; Blood pressure; Case reports; COVID-19; Creatinine; Diarrhea; Disease transmission; Dyspnea; Emergency medical care; Fever; Heart rate; HIV; Human immunodeficiency virus; Immune system; Infectious Disease; Influenza; Internal Medicine; Laboratories; Legionnaires' disease; Lymphocytes; Neutrophils; Nitrogen; Oxygen saturation; Pleural effusion; Pneumonia; Public Health; Radiography; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Steroids; Streptococcus infections; United States > US; historically marginalized populations; legionnaires’ disease; covid; febrile respiratory illness; social determinants of health (sdoh); community acquired pneumonia; legionella
• ISSN: 2168-8184; 2168-8184
• DOI: 10.7759/cureus.32169

We report the case of a woman from the Bronx, New York, who presented to the emergency department (ED) in June 2020 with a febrile respiratory illness resembling coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) but was ultimately diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease (LD). New York City (NYC) rapidly became an epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In the years since the pandemic started, variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have recurred in multiple waves and remain an important cause of viral respiratory illness. The bacteria is often under-recognized as a cause of community-acquired pneumonia, yet it recurs each year in clusters, outbreaks, or as sporadic infections. Pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2 and can present similarly and may not be readily distinguished in the absence of diagnostic testing.