It's common knowledge that the most common symptoms of COVID-19 are loss of taste and smell, fever and continuous cough, among others. This we assumed until a preliminary study by Imperial College London has added to this list up to four new types of symptoms that, in principle, could be related to coronavirus disease.
According to the London study carried out in recent weeks, which to date has not been reviewed by experts outside Imperial College, these new symptoms are as follows: chills, loss of appetite, headaches or muscle aches. At the same time, the scientists have also registered that the symptoms of COVID-19 change according to the age of the person in question.
Chills, loss of appetite, headaches or muscle pains
On the same subject, chills were related to cases of coronavirus in patients of any age, headaches were more frequent in children between 5 and 17 years old and loss of appetite in people over 18.
Research conducted by Imperial College London found that muscle aches were seen in people aged between 18 and 54, while the likelihood of fever, persistent cough and loss of appetite was lower among infected people aged between 5 and 17 compared to adult patients.
Paul Elliot's warning to people who don't know they suffer from COVID
Over one million people from all over England have been involved in the study trials. The tests were based on saliva and documents from June 2020 and January 2021. In the research, the study's creators found that the more symptoms participants had, the more likely they were to be positive for coronavirus. Despite this, around 60% of those infected with COVID had no symptoms in the week prior to being tested.
Paul Elliot, director of the research, pointed out that "these new findings suggest that many people who have COVID-19 will not be tested and therefore will not be isolated because their symptoms do not coincide with those included in the health guidelines to help identify infected people," the English researcher explained about this novel study.
On the sequelae of coronavirus patients
Researchers at Imperial College London also conducted another study in May 2020, in which they warned of the need to further study the impact that the COVID infection is having on people's mental health. Adam Hampshire, the study's investigator, stated that "the pandemic is likely to have an acute and lasting impact, even for a significant proportion of patients who remained at home with respiratory problems and did not need medical help. This evidence could be important for future therapies and for reducing the long-term health burden of this disease," Hampshire said.
The study was based on thousands of online surveys of COVID survivors in the first wave of the pandemic and involved 13,049 people. "Our data confirmed the hypothesis that PTSD symptoms were disproportionately elevated in those who required hospital admission (especially those who needed respiratory support), compared to those with mild COVID-19 symptoms who had been treated at home," the creators of the study at Imperial College London report.
[This is a translation of the original article "Las autoridades advierten de 4 nuevos síntomas del coronavirus" published in espanadiario.net]