Now, researchers have managed to figure the average amount of time it takes COVID-19 patients to lose their sense of taste and smell. For those that don’t know, a loss of sense of smell and taste is called anosmia and dysgeusia, and has been found to be a key symptom in COVID-19 patients. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati conducted a study on the characteristics and symptoms of 103 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 over a six-week period.
The researchers asked the patients how many days they experienced COVID-19 symptoms, and also asked them to talk about how long they had certain symptoms and the severity of them. What they found was that at least 61% of the patients said they lost their sense of smell and taste, and that average time it took a patient to lose both of these senses was 3.4 days.
Ahmad Sedaghat, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the UC College of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and an UC Health physician specializing in diseases of the nose and sinuses said, “We also found in this study that the severity of the loss of smell is correlated with how bad your other COVID-19 symptoms will be. If the anosmia, also known as loss of smell, is worse, the patients reported worse shortness of breath and more severe fever and cough.”
“Should that concern patients? The relationship between decreased sense of smell and the rest of the COVID-19 is something to be aware of. If someone has a decreased sense of smell with COVID-19 we know they are within the first week of the disease course and there is still another week or two to expect.”
Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/72360/this-coronavirus-symptom-shows-up-in-3-days-heres-what-it-means/index.html