The tweet received more than 15,400 likes, with many people responding with their own accounts of the dreaded malady. 

In the pre-pandemic world, colds weren’t something to be taken seriously; it was quite common to suffer through a day’s work while blowing into a hanky or attend a meeting with streaming eyes. But anecdotally, simply getting through a day’s work with the super cold is near impossible. A call-out on social media revealed a range of symptoms, from “sandpaper throat” to “utter fatigue”. One individual responded to say she is on week five of the cold and has a cracked rib from all the coughing. 

It is normal for common colds, and other respiratory tract infections, to spread quickly in September when the schools go back and autumn arrives, and Public Health England surveillance released this month showed that the number of people coming forward with common colds and other respiratory infections is rising, particularly among the under-15s, though cases are rising in older people too.

However, 18 months of Covid restrictions such as social distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitising may have increased our susceptibility to the common cold. Some experts are calling it an “immunity debt”, which happens when people who have not been exposed to normal levels of viruses and bacteria experience a surge in infections when coming in contact with a virus.

With this particularly nasty cold on the rise, here’s everything you need to know about it, from the reported symptoms to why it’s thought to be spreading.

What is the ‘super-cold’, and how is it different from a normal cold?

The common cold is caused by over 200 different strains of the virus. Prof Ronald Eccles, emeritus professor at Cardiff University and former director of the common cold centre, believes the “super cold” circulating at the moment is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The majority of people will have symptoms similar to a common cold but, in babies under two and the elderly, it can cause more severe illness. RSV is particularly common: 65 per cent of children will be infected with the virus by the age of one. By age three, this rises to 97 per cent of children.

One of the problems with RSV is that it’s highly contagious. It is transmissible through coughs and sneezes but, unlike coronavirus, it also spreads widely through hands and surfaces. This means it’s near impossible to stop the virus from spreading among children in classrooms. In July, the Academy of Medical Sciences warned that a host of respiratory viruses, including flu and RSV, could return in the winter and add to the strain of Covid on the NHS.

Many people with the super cold have reported experiencing longer illnesses than normal or, like Kelly, come down with additional symptoms after a brief period of recovery. As Zoe Broughton, a GP based in London, sees it, this could be because we are more susceptible to picking up a different cold virus during our recovery period. “It can feel like you have a never-ending cold when, in fact, you have just been unlucky and contracted two cold viruses back-to-back,” she adds. 

What are the symptoms of the ‘super-cold’?

Sufferers of the “super-cold” report symptoms such as sinus and chest infections, coughing, sore throat, fatigue and loss of taste and smell. These symptoms are similar to those of Covid-19, but patients are not testing positive on PCR tests. Some patients with the so-called super-cold describe being bed bound for days.

Why is it thought to be circulating now?

Prof Eccles explains that months of lockdown have reduced our immunity to the viruses that cause common colds. “Normally, we are exposed to these viruses on a daily or weekly basis. But now we’re like athletes out of condition who haven’t trained for a year. We’ve suddenly got this virus and our immune system is overreacting to it,” he says. This could explain why so many people are suffering symptoms that feel more severe than those caused by a regular cold. 

Usually, Prof Eccles says, we would build up immunity to cold viruses on both an individual and a community basis. “You would normally expect more than half of people to have been exposed to this virus in the last five or six months. Now, it’s come into the community when nobody has any immunity to it and it spreads like wildfire,” he says. 

Broughton agrees, adding that our bodies don’t produce long-term immunity to the common cold. “Your level of immunity to a cold virus relies on your post-cold residual antibody levels – these decline fairly rapidly after initial exposure to a cold,” she says. “This means rather than perhaps getting a milder version of a cold, you get a full hit of the muscle aches, sore throat, snot and headache and all those other grim cold symptoms.”