- A study from the University of Southern California was able to determine that COVID-19 symptoms often start in a certain order.
- According to the study, although influenza usually starts with a cough, fever is the first symptom of COVID-19.
- However, doctors working with patients with COVID-19 said that according to their experience, the symptoms are not as predictable.
The symptoms of COVID-19, including fever and cough, are similar to the symptoms in a number of other common illnesses, including seasonal flu.
With the flu season in full swing, how can you tell if fever is a symptom of flu or COVID-19? A new study has shed light on how COVID-19 symptoms occur, which can help people figure out if their cough is just a cough or something worse.
Research from the University of Southern California (USC) was able to determine that COVID-19 symptoms often start in a certain order.
This finding may help people with COVID-19 to isolate themselves and get treatment earlier, which can significantly improve the patient’s outcomes.
“This order is especially important to know when we have overlapping cycles of diseases such as influenza that coincide with infections of COVID-19,” said Peter Kuhn, PhD, one of the study authors and professor of medicine, biomedical engineering and aviation and mechanical engineering at USC. “Doctors can determine what steps they need to take to care for the patient, and it can prevent the patient’s condition from getting worse.”
To predict the order of symptoms, researchers analyzed the rate of occurrence of symptoms collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) for more than 55,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in China.
They also looked at a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases collected between December 2019 and January 2020 by the China Medical Expert Group for COVID-19 and provided by the National Health Commission of China.
To compare the sequence of COVID-19 symptoms with influenza, the researchers reported data from more than 2,000 influenza cases in North America, Europe, and the Southern Hemisphere between 1994 and 1998.
“The order of the symptoms is important,” said Joseph Larsen, lead study author and USC Dornsife doctoral candidate. “Knowing that each disease is different means that doctors can more quickly identify if someone is likely to have COVID-19, or another disease, which can help them make better treatment decisions.”
According to the findings of the study, this is the sequence of symptoms that people with COVID-19 may experience:
- fever
- cough and muscle aches
- nausea or vomiting
- diarrhea
“The study found that patients with seasonal flu more commonly developed a cough before the onset of fever,” said Dr. Robert Glatter, emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told Healthline. “In fact, it can be difficult to distinguish, as flu often starts suddenly with a triad of symptoms, including back pain, chills and a dry cough.”
Glatter said the findings could be potentially useful “when assessing multiple patients in a busy clinical setting.”
According to the study, although influenza usually starts with a cough, fever is the first symptom of COVID-19.
“Our results support the notion that fever should be used to investigate access to facilities as regions begin to reopen after the spring break of 2020,” the study’s authors wrote.
Glatter shared his experience treating COVID-19 patients in New York City.
“Although fever is usually the earliest symptom of COVID-19 infection, the reality of what I see in the front lines is more erratic,” he said.
“In fact, some patients may only be present with loss of taste or smell and otherwise feel well,” Glatter said. ‘I’ve also seen patients present with’ COVID tones’ or cold sores; ‘n livedo-type [reddish-blue discoloration] of skin reaction in response to acute inflammation, in the absence of fever, cough or other respiratory symptoms. ”
Glatter said other patients “also have malaise, headaches and dizziness,” which in some ways resemble the symptoms of stroke, but without fever, cough or any evidence of upper respiratory symptoms.
“I also saw that patients only have chest pain, without any breathing symptoms,” he said. “The onset of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after the onset of respiratory symptoms such as fever and cough may also indicate that someone may have COVID-19.”
According to Glatter, the key point is that health care workers should be vigilant and keep an open mind when evaluating patients who may have symptoms related to the disease. “They are not always ‘according to the book’, so you should throw a wide net when thinking about who may have COVID-19 or not,” he said.
“It is critical to understand the progression of symptoms of COVID-19-infected individuals so that you can stop the spread of the disease – in fact isolate it and then begin effective contact detection,” Glatter said. “It is very relevant for a virus that is two to three times more contagious than flu, leading to outbreaks of clusters.”
He also said that understanding the first symptoms not only helps patients to test faster, but also to start distancing physically or socially after the first symptoms have started.
“It also underscores the importance of wearing masks and hand hygiene when learning symptoms,” Glatter said.
He also finds that sudden loss of smell and taste and inflammatory skin reactions such as cold sores can be ‘important clinical clues that can distinguish COVID-19 from seasonal flu.’
According to the
These are three variants that are very well monitored:
- Variant B.1.1.7. It was first identified in the UK in the autumn. It is found to spread faster (and easier) than other variants. It may be associated with an increased risk of death compared to other variants, but more research is needed to confirm this. It was detected in the United States in December.
- Variant B.1.351. It was first identified in October in South Africa and later detected in the United States in December.
- Variant P.1. It was first identified in travelers from Brazil who were tested at a Japanese airport in early January.
Recent research states that the B.1.1.7 variant does not affect the respiratory tract or result in lung disease worse than SARS-CoV-2. The authors of the study stressed that “complete and clearer data on this topic will be ready in the near future.”
Another study found that although the new coronavirus variant may be more contagious, there is still no evidence that it causes serious diseases.
“Scientists have now studied it and found that these variants tend to spread faster; they are more transmissible or contagious,” Vismita Gupta-Smith, a WHO public information and advocacy officer, said in a statement. . “So far, however, they do not appear to be causing more serious illnesses or a higher mortality rate or any kind of different clinical manifestations.”
She added that the variants act much like SARS-CoV-2 and cause similar diseases.
Researchers analyzed data from more than 50,000 patients with COVID-19 and compared their symptoms with previous records of people who had the flu to find that COVID-19 symptoms occur in a particular order.
This information can help differentiate people with COVID-19 from those who have the flu, and help those with COVID-19 seek care and isolate themselves sooner.
Experts with front-line experience emphasize that this progress does not always manifest, but that it is still a useful guide for healthcare providers.
Experts also monitor how new variants affect the body and whether there are symptoms that change.