It’s official; anosmia has been officially recognised as a symptom of Coronavirus.
Anosmia, also known as a loss of smell/taste has been experienced by too many Coronavirus patients for it to be not official any longer. And after several weeks of patents reporting it, the official advice has changed so that if you have new continuous cough, or fever, or anosmia, you must self isolate accordingly.
UK medical officials have been reportedly monitoring the strange symptom since around March, when we first locked down.
Deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, who has been advising the government, said it was necessary to “introduce it at the right time when we think it’s going to make a difference moving forwards to how we pick up cases”.
He also added that recognising the symptom officially could allow doctors to pick up 2% more cases, that would have gone undetected otherwise.
He mentioned that when trying to find symptoms that will help pick up new cases, “we are looking for things that are not so common and non-specific that they would cause more confusion than clarity”.
But regardless, the government has been subject to criticism for not adding the symptom to the official list sooner, as it has been widely recognised and reported on elsewhere for a while now.
