Doctors in the US have updated their official symptoms
of coronavirus after doctors reported seeing them time and
again.
Initially, the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) listed just
three symptoms for Covid-19 which were: shortness of breath, a cough and a
fever.
But as doctors have learned more about the deadly bug, which
has claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people in the UK, they have updated
their list of symptoms.
The CDC in America now reports the symptoms which could
appear between two to 14 days of exposure to the virus as:
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- Chills
- Repeated shaking with chills
- Muscle pain
- Headache
- Sore throat
- New loss of taste or smell
In an Iranian study, 76% of Covid-19 patients who reported a
loss of smell said it had a sudden onset. In many of the cases, anosmia, as
it’s called, appeared before other symptoms.
Vallery Lomas, a 34-year-old champion baker, told the Washington
Post: “It scared the hell out of me.
“I could smell nothing for probably five days.”
Professor Claire Hopkins, president of the British
Rhinological Society and a leading ear, nose and throat consultant surgeon, is
leading the charge to get loss of sense of smell recognised by the World Health
Organization and Public Health England as a coronavirus symptom.
Prof. Hopkins said: "One in six patients will lose
their sense of smell as an isolated symptom, really without getting any other
associated symptoms.
"One in four will get it along with other symptoms, but
right at the beginning of infection.
"It is a good early marker of infection."
She added: "When you look at all the different
symptoms, loss of sense of smell is actually one of the best predictors of
Covid-19 infection.
"Much better than fever, and more prevalent and a
stronger predictor than cough."
In France, researchers are preparing to launch a human trial
to test their hypothesis that nicotine can help the body combat the Covid-19
infection.
The scientists hypothesised in their study that nicotine,
which is contained in cigarettes, could influence whether or not the
coronavirus molecules are able to attach themselves to receptors in the body.
"You have the virus which arrives on the receptor, and the nicotine blocks that, and they separate," said Jean-Pierre Changeux, emeritus professor of neuroscience at France's Pasteur institute, describing the hypothetical process.
