If you only experience itchy eyes, you might have hay fever. If, in addition to a fever, you are more lethargic or your throat is more sore than usual, you might be infected with the omicron variant.

Or, you might just feel more lethargic due to lack of sleep from itchy eyes and sore throat. Bottom line is, since you can't get tested for Covid unless you have symptoms, but can't go to get the test in most places if you have symptoms, there's not a whole lot of point in worrying if your symptoms could either be hay fever or Omicron when there's not much you can do.

Just my opinion from what I've been seeing in the news:

Sad to say I agree with smithinjapan. With the UK about to declare 'Game over' on Thursday and one of their top medical advisors stating we just have to accept Omicron as another daily risk in our lives, Australia re-opening etc we are way past the point of any measures to mitigate spread. Omicron seems to actually be useful to the vaccinated as a tool to develop better resistance even though that may sound counter intuitive.

So yeah...it's time to give up and let the unvaxed take their chances as long as Omicron and it's mild offspring remain the dominant strains.

My experience and opinion differs from others.

I tried to see my GP for asthma and allergy symptoms. Have had some level of cough for decades as part of asthma but, it had gotten really bad and wasn’t improving. I couldn’t even make an appointment to see the doctor until I had a negative PCR test. The test was done in the GPs parking lot and cost less than ¥3,000.

I’d been on steroids for weeks and had had to be extremely careful to avoid riskier settings, worn an N95 mask and done at home Covid tests weekly so, even having near zero immunity I wasn’t especially concerned that I had Covid.

Had antibiotics on hand and took some my lung condition improved greatly. So, by the time I saw the doctor I already knew that whatever was going on was bacterial.

I agree that basically there’s no point worrying about whether your symptoms are Omicron or allergies. I meet a fairly large number of people in a week. Many of whom I have been around through many allergy seasons. And this year’s symptoms are wicked. Mine included. So, I don’t think it is quite as easy as the doctor above makes it out to be.

I do think it makes sense for people to continue to practice social distancing and masking and even home testing while going on with their lives.

Can’t see how to edit so..,

Also want to ad that if someone is having the allergy symptoms of sneezing and runny nose it is logical to take an allergy medicine. They are easy enough to buy otc no doctor visit needed. If the allergy medicine is effective, it’s logical the the issue is allergies. If it doesn’t affect the symptoms, a Covid test is likely in order.

As with every other disease without clear, pathognomonic signs and symptoms, COVID is a very difficult clinical diagnosis. This is why testing is still a necessity, not only because the risks associated with it are very different from a common cold or a case of allergy, but because its very high capacity of spreading.

It is very difficult to justify asking someone with unespecific symptoms to isolate for a while without some objective evidence of infection.