While vaccines are the greatest weapons you can add to your arsenal of protection against Covid, they are no silver bullet. Even jabbed patients can still catch the disease and suffer from symptoms. The latest reports share that cases are on the rise again, with new “top” symptoms including hyposmia. Here’s how to spot it.
Speaking on YouTube’s Zoe Channel, Professor Tim Spector said: “Covid is back in the news again because rates are going up and we’re now above 200,000 [cases]. That’s about 36 percent higher than two weeks ago which is quite a lot.
“About one in 27 people still has Covid and we’ve got a way to go before we get back to those [numbers] we saw in the summer.
“The Omicron variant BA.5 is still the commonest one. There are others around but they haven’t taken over.”
With this dominant strain driving up the cases in the UK, the symptoms still include the usual suspects like sore throat, runny nose and headache.
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However, the latest reports from The Zoe Covid Study App, which keeps track of dominant Covid symptoms through patient reports, have added an altered sense of smell to their list of “top” signs to watch.
Hyposmia, or a decline in your ability to smell, is one of the symptoms you could experience.
According to research, published in the journal HNO, around 31 percent of the patients who experience distorted smell also suffered from rhinitis, which describes chronic sneezing or a congested, drippy nose.
The study even reports that hyposmia was the main or only symptom in two of their subjects.
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Apart from decline in your ability to smell, Covid patients often report parosmia, where the smell of a familiar object changes to something unpleasant, or phantosmia, where you can smell something that isn’t there.
Despite Covid still triggering symptoms that target your nose, the “traditional” loss of smell is much “less common”, according to Zoe.
While this pesky sign used to be a top indicator of Covid, loss of smell now ranks 14th on the list of prevalent signs.
Patients suffering from the virus tend to report changes to their smell instead of complete loss of smell.
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This symptom list was made based on the latest data from the 30 days before December 5, using Zoe contributor reports with positive Covid tests.
The health study explains: “We used to report the top five symptoms. But over time, we’ve seen that these change frequently.
“So, we’re now reporting the top 10 symptoms, which remain more stable.
“The order of these symptoms is based on contributor reports in the app and doesn’t take into account which variant caused the infection or any demographic information.”
While there’s no need to self-isolate by law when you have the virus, the NHS still asks people to stay at home and avoid contact with others when infected.
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