Could your cough, runny nose and other symptoms be flu, allergies or – worse luck– corona virus?

Has this silent, invisible new pathogen taken up residence in your body?

How do you know?

What can you do?

Here are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations:

1. Take a deep, cleansing breath. If you’re congested, do the best you can.

If you are developing COVID-19, the upper-respiratory illness that results from infection by the novel corona virus, you are most likely going to recover. Be calm.

2. Check your symptoms.

Dry cough is one.

Are you short of breath?

Have a fever? Normal body temperature is 98.6° F.

Anything above 100° F is a fever. This mean you’re sick with something.

3. If you have these symptoms, call your doctor immediately. Report you have symptoms of COVID-19.

The doctor’s staff can then protect themselves and others from infection.

Unless you are having critical problems, do not go to an emergency department.

If you do not have a primary care doctor, call your local health department.

If you have insurance, your carrier has a directory of primary care doctors.

4. Do not leave home unless under doctor’s orders.

While you are sick, stay home from work and everywhere else unless you visit your doctor or are told to report to a hospital.

For 80% of those with COVID-19, the most serious result is a mild cold.

If you must leave home, wear a face mask so that you do not exhale the virus and infect others.

5. Tell your doctor everything. Report any travel to an area with community contagion on COVID-19.

Report contacts with anyone who has tested positive.

The doctor most likely will test you for other viruses such as the flu before testing you for COVID-19.

Symptoms of the flu include include chills, body aches, sore throat, headache, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and runny nose.

6. Get tested when tests are available. There still are too few test kits for blanket coverage of all of us.

More tests are being made, and more labs are processing results. But you may be well again by then.

You need a doctor’s order to get the corona virus test.

If your symptoms are mild, your doctor may send you home without a test.

If you don’t feel better in a few days, call your doctor, who may then send you to the hospital. 7. Go into isolation.

Stay in a room with 1 per son taking care of you.

Use a separate bathroom, if you can. Limit contact with people you live with.

Don’t go outside the house except to the doctor.

Avoid public transportation, ride shares or cabs.

You can give it to others.

The test will give you a name for your condition. But there’s no known treatment or cure yet. Most of us will tough it out on the couch like the flu.

8. Step up disinfection of your home, especially where an ill person is staying.

In the 20% of cases that go to the hospital, most recover as well.

Deaths from COVID-19 are estimated at about 2%, much higher than flu. 9. Keep your pets safe.

The CDC recommends limited contact with pets and other animals while you are ill with COVID-19.

No one has reported passing COVID-19 to a pet, but limit contact with animals until we know more.