Anosmia and Ageusia are the Strongest Sign You Have COVID-19, Study Says

Loss of smell and taste are the clearest signs that you’ve got COVID-19

[ from the article] There are few symptoms more popularly associated with COVID than cough, fever, and shortness of breath. But a new international study suggests that there is another set of symptoms that can reveal a case of coronavirus with far more accuracy: a loss of taste and smell. According to the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, these two COVID symptoms are actually the clearest signs that you’ve got the virus.

Read on to learn more about the study’s findings, and to find out how serious your COVID symptoms are, check out If  You Have One of These COVID Symptoms, the CDC Says to Call 911.

Anosmia and Ageusia are a reliable COVID-19 signal

Using longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys, experts from the Harvard Medical School, University College London (UCL), King’s College London, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel looked at patient-reported data from three digital surveillance platforms in the U.S., U.K., and Israel.

With a total testing pool of over 10 million respondents, 658,325 individuals tested positive for coronavirus, representing a five percent rate of positivity.

They found that anosmia and ageusia (the clinical terms for loss of smell and taste, respectively), were “omnipresent,” and “a reliable COVID-19 signal, regardless of the participatory surveillance platform or testing policy.” In fact, these two telltale symptoms were “consistently the strongest predictor of COVID-19 infection across all platforms over time,” the researchers explained.

Anosmia and Ageusia were highly predictive of a positive test, highlighting the importance of educating the public on a broader range of symptoms.

Read this article from Yahoo