Coronavirus symptoms often come as a mild nuisance to most sufferers of the disease, with deadly consequences mainly amongst the most vulnerable. However, recently the infamous symptoms of the disease have allegedly shifted, with one new manifestation experienced amongst young people.
What is the hidden symptom of COVID-19?
COVID-19 symptoms often mirror those of the flu or common cold in their mildest forms.
The most common experiences from those who have it include fever and persistent, dry cough.
However, one professor recently revealed young people are at risk of two seemingly harmless symptoms.
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Professor Nirmal Kumar, head of ENT UK, said young people experience a different set of symptoms to older COVID-19 patients.
He told Sky News they experience a loss of taste and smell, which may also indicate where the virus chooses to make its home.
Professor Kumar said: “In young patients, they do not have any significant symptoms such as the cough and fever, but they may have just the loss of sense of smell and taste, which suggests that these viruses are lodging in the nose.”
In a statement, ENT UK, a membership which represents ear, nose and throat surgery said evidence of these symptoms has come from some of the worst affected countries in the world.
They said: “There is already good evidence from South Korea, China and Italy that significant numbers of patients with proven COVID-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia (loss of sense of smell).
“There have been a rapidly growing number of reports of a significant increase in the number of patients presenting with anosmia in the absence of other symptoms – this has been widely shared on medical discussion boards by surgeons from all regions managing a high incidence of cases.”
In a joint statement, Professor Kumar and Professor Claire Hopkins, president of the British Rhinological Society, said the unusual symptoms could help to identify super spreaders.
However, the symptoms aren’t currently among those which warrant testing or self-isolation.
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Among the potentially one-third of COVID-19 sufferers with the loss of taste and smell is health minister Nadine Dorries, one of the first Government officials to contract the disease.
She said via Twitter on March 19: “A side effect of #coronavirus for me is the fact that I have lost [100 per cent] of taste and smell.
“Absolutely zero of both, so weird. Eating and drinking warm or cold that’s all I can tell.
“No point in putting a tea bag in the water.”
COVID-19 is one of more than 200 other viruses known to cause the symptoms, known as post-viral anosmia.
Among those other viruses are other coronaviruses according to the joint statement issued by professors Kumar and Hopkins.
The viruses location could be to blame, as experts have noted some diseases damage receptor cells in the nose otherwise responsible for smell.
However, Professor Carl Philpott, director of medical affairs and research at charity Fifth Sense, said COVID-19 likely causes “some sort of inflammation in the olfactory nerves” which results in taste and smell loss.
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