Loss Of Taste And Smell Are Now Officially Coronavirus Symptoms
The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything that we have seen in a long time and even the best medics and scientists around the world have admitted that they too are only learning about this new virus.Initially, COVID-19 was classified as yet another respiratory illness and the symptoms were said to be cough, fever and breathing difficulty, etc.
?Since then fatigue, diarrhea, abdominal pain, or loss of appetite, etc have also been listed as COVID-19 symptoms.?
Now the British health officials added loss of taste and smell to their coronavirus symptoms list on Monday. This was added after experts warned cases were being missed.
"From today, all individuals should self-isolate if they develop a new continuous cough or fever or anosmia," Britain's chief medical officers said in a statement."Anosmia is the loss or a change in your normal sense of smell. It can also affect your sense of taste as the two are closely linked."?
Anyone noticing a distinct change in their sense of taste or smell should now self-isolate for seven days to reduce the spread of infection, England's deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam told reporters.?
The symptoms will now feature with fever and cough as main indicators of the virus, with Van-Tam saying it would mean a two percent rise in picking up cases.?
A major study by King's College London last week found that people with a positive test result were three times more likely to report loss of smell and taste than those returned a negative test.?
Report author Tim Spector said that Public Health England's (PHE) previous insistence on only including fever and cough as major symptoms meant thousands of cases were missed.The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group concluded last month that loss of smell or taste should not be added to the symptom list, although The World Health Organisation and other countries including the United States now count it as a symptom.?
The UK, where the death toll from the deadly virus has crossed 34,000, joins a number of other countries as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO) already including anosmia in the list of symptoms.?
However, loss of smell and taste may still be signs of other respiratory infections, such as the common cold, and therefore experts say fever and a persistent cough remain the most important symptoms of coronavirus to look out for.King's College London has used an app to gather symptom information from over 1.5 million people in the UK who believe they might have had coronavirus and suggested that even more symptoms must be included to the official list, such as tiredness and stomach pain or diarrhoea.
