Per a May study published in the Nature Medicine journal, nearly 65 percent of COVID-19 patients reported anosmia, or the loss of smell, as their first coronavirus symptom. And research from a collection of COVID-19 studies found that loss of smell was more than 20 times more likely to predict a positive case of the coronavirus than other commonly reported symptoms such as cough, fever, or stuffy nose. “My impression is that anosmia is an earlier symptom of COVID-19, relative to fever, and some infected people can have anosmia and nothing else,” physician Andrew Badley, head of a virus lab at the Mayo Clinic, told Stat. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists the loss of smell as a “less common symptom” of the coronavirus, compared to what they list as “more common symptoms,” which are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. According to the Nature Medicine study, done by a team of King’s College London scientists, loss of smell should actually be included on the top of the list of common symptoms.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. Unfortunately, many people may not realize they have lost part of their sense of smell, which is why experts told Stat that scratch-and-sniff tests could be a reliable addition to temperature checks in order to weed out possibly infected persons. In a Mayo Clinic report of several studies, they found that 41 percent of patients had reported loss of smell either partly or completely—but when using testing measures like the scratch-and-sniff, they found that the rate of anosmia was actually 2.3 times higher, making it clear that many patients didn’t realize they were experiencing this telltale symptom. If adequately tested for, this symptom may be the most reliable sign that a person is experiencing a COVID-19 infection. And for more coronavirus symptoms, discover The New Coronavirus Symptom That’s Appearing Weeks After You Get Sick.
