Incubation period for flu

Since there are so many different strains of the flu it is really hard to say what the incubation period is for the flu.  Like with the common flu the incubation period is usually between 36 and 48 hours.  But there are cases where you can start seeing symptoms after only 3 - 6 hours of catching the virus.

Now depending on what type of flu it is will determine the incubation period, there are many flu's out there and they are all different.  Some flu's the incubation period is 15 minutes and there are others that the incubation periods is months or years down the road.  Most flu's are passed through the personal touch of something that has been infected, someone coughed on their hand and touched the door handle 2 minutes before you just touched it.  Or shaking someone's hand that has the virus, even though they might not be showing signs of anything they could have passed it to you.  Specially with traveling being so popular in this era, it is easy to infect hundreds if not thousands of people just from one carrier.

Like the incubation period for the Bird flu that hit a few years ago is 3 to 7 days, after those days you will start seeing symptoms like fever, headache, tiredness, cough, body aches, and congestion.  These are really similar to any cold really but at the time when people got the symptoms they freaked out and went to the doctors.  Which was a good thing.

The incubation period for the swing flu is between 24 and 48 hours depending on how healthy you are to start with.  The symptoms you will start to see are the same as bird flu, and really any other flu out there.  They are fever, sore throat, cough, and stuffy or runny nose.  The only thing that give it away that it may be swine flu is that it is not currently flu season, and if you have been to mexico anytime around the break out of the flu.

Those are just some incubation periods for some flu's, to find more you can look for them on the internet.  If you start seeing symtoms of a flu or cold out of the blue specially when they are not during the flu season you should go to the doctor and make sure it isn't something bad.

If you have any questions or comments about this site please contact us, we would like to hear any feedback you may have on incubation period for the flu.