I've heard plenty of anecdotes about "a bad virus I had in January/February" (and I even had one myself!), but man, this is the first one I've heard that really sounds like it could be it.
This person might be able to get an antibody test eventually. Probably not any time soon given the impending resource strain. Probably not ever actually, unless infection has long term effects.
I had a sudden gastro episode at the end of january (could have been from stale yogurt, dunno), mild fever and body ache for cca 24 hours. Practically in parallel my sore throat started, coughing a lot of sputum for next 2 weeks. But basically no fever. As I was getting better, my wife got it from me, another 10 days of 'fun'. No running nose, no fever after first day.
I never had anything similar, for last couple of years I don't get this sick since I became much more active and started doing tons of mountain sports. Mostly 2-4 days sore throat/running nose and I am back.
I keep thinking if we caught it (in Switzerland), but probably it was something else.
I used to have this 2-4 days of sore throat (with mild fever and some maybe mild sputum coughing) at max 2-3 times a year and other than nothing else at all.
Since last one and a half years I have this daily thing - in the morning I wake up with slightly thick sputum accumulated in my throat (more if I was sleeping in AC or fan was too fast or it was colder that night) and then throughout the day there's always something that feels sticky around the throat. I never had this.
Talked to 5-6 doctors. They did CT Scan of face (cross-section I guess), chest x rays and put a camera in my noses to look infection and they said there's none inside. So it's just allergy to pollution and pollens (or something else) that finally kicked in or something like that. I live in a polluted city which has a pollen problem since decades. Last summer I backpacked in Europe for two months. The symptoms were gone exactly for that period (showing a little in some colder parts of Eastern Europe when I was there). It's sad. They all basically say I have to live with it now.
PS. They also found out that I have DNS (CT Scan and couldn't inset that camera thing in my left nose) and suggested either surgery or just keep taking saline nasal spray and they said it might not really help with my condition.
Perhaps it will be useful to have an air quality meter and see what it says about the quality of air in your bedroom when you sleep. The one I used is "IQAir AirVisual Pro" and it helped me identify and fix some problems which helped me wake up feeling healthier than before fixing those issues.
