It’s been more than a year since Covid-19 landed in the United States. And doctors across the country are experiencing the known symptoms such as cough, fever, shortness of breath and loss of taste and smell.
The range of possibilities when a person with new breathing symptoms comes to a doctor “is very, very narrow these days,” said Anish Mehta, medical director of clinical quality and virtual health at Eden Health, and an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai. “It’s probably Covid if you have a fever and cough, or if you have a fever and feel muscle.”
Medical researchers have also learned more about how a Covid-19 infection can wrinkle through the circulatory, nervous and immune systems with symptoms such as rash, blood clots, strokes and even foot injuries called ‘Covid tone’. They are also more familiar with the more than 10 percent of Covid-19 survivors who report long-term symptoms, including difficulty thinking and focusing, palpitations, hair loss, and mood swings.
But even now researchers are finding new symptoms. Tim Spector, a professor of molecular epidemiology at King’s College London, studied Covid-19 throughout the pandemic using a Covid-19 symptom study smartphone app. He recently received reports of mouth sores and something he calls Covid’s tongue – a vague yellow-white layer on the tongue.
“It came about because people sent me images of their tongue,” Spector said. ‘I posted it and then people started … they realized it was original when they had Covid. This is a strange phenomenon that no doctor thought was related. ”
Although cases and hospitalizations are declining and several Covid-19 vaccines are on the roll, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 is spreading, and new variants threaten the progress made during the pandemic, to undo. The more the virus spreads, the greater the chance that it will get new mutations. Changes in symptoms can be a warning sign of the changes to the virus. Doctors must therefore stay on their toes.
“I think the lesson is unusual symptoms can come out of the blue without any clear explanation,” said Andrew Chan, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, who collaborated with Spector in the symptom study. app, said. . “It should be in every healthcare provider’s mind.”
The list of Covid-19 symptoms is getting longer
The fact that Covid-19 has spread so widely, with 115 million cases worldwide so far, means that the disease has affected people under various conditions, including health conditions, age, nutrition, living standards and access to health care. . The way Covid-19 varies with these variables is part of the reason why there are so many different symptoms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most common signs of Covid-19 are:
- Fever or cold fever
- Cough
- Shortness of breath or breathing problems
- Fatigue
- New loss of taste or smell
- Headache
- Muscle or body aches
- Keelseer
- Congestion or runny nose
- Nausea or vomiting
- Diarrhea
It is useful to consider the progress of Covid-19 in phases. During the early stages of the disease, it is the virus that causes the most damage, leading to many of the respiratory symptoms, such as loss of taste or smell, which remains one of the most predictive symptoms. As the disease progresses, the response of the immune system becomes the predominant factor, leading to effects such as fever, chills and inflammation. Once the virus disappears, damage by the virus and the immune response can remain.
For example, Covid-19 can lead to abnormal blood clotting. That clot can choke blood vessels, which impair the function of other organs such as the liver or kidneys. Some of these effects can take weeks to manifest.
Another factor to consider is that Covid-19 symptoms can be grouped together, indicating the prognosis for the disease. In a preprint article using data from the Covid-19 symptom detection program, researchers identified six different symptoms for Covid-19. Patients with respiratory symptoms such as sore throat and cough, along with gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and abdominal pain, were much more likely to end up in the hospital than patients with Covid-19 who did not have gastrointestinal problems.
Clusters also emerge as a warning sign of the tall Covid. “We’ve seen people with fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, odor loss – especially a kind of group of symptoms – appear to be more likely to develop long-term Covid,” Chan said.
Scientists are still trying to determine if Covid is long due to the virus itself, other opportunistic infections or latent underlying conditions exacerbated by the disease. “The underlying biology as to why these things were caused by a virus is not clear,” Chan said. Nevertheless, health officials are now concerned that these long-covid symptoms could be a massive health crisis.
“I fear that some people who have had these effects, who have been out for three or four months, will not be on their way to getting better in a few more months,” said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. , told NBC News March 1. “If you think we know that 28 million people in the United States have had Covid, if even 1 percent of them have chronic long-term consequences, that’s a lot of people.”
At the same time, there are people who become infected and do not experience symptoms at all, but can spread the virus. Estimates vary, but researchers estimate that between 20 and 50 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections do not produce symptoms and lead to disease.
Although researchers now have a better understanding of the disease, there is still much to learn. And as the disease continues to spread and mutate, researchers are concerned that it could start in unexpected ways.
So far, people infected with the new variant have similar Covid-19 symptoms as older variants
This is rare, but researchers have documented several cases of people being re-infected with SARS-CoV-2. Most of the infection leads to milder symptoms than the first. But several people became seriously ill the second time, and some died.
The new variants of the virus that spread quickly can increase the chances of this happening. It has already been shown that some of the variants are more transmissible and probably more lethal. In laboratory studies, antibodies that counteract earlier versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were less effective against some variants, such as the B.1.351 variant first found in South Africa.
This means that someone who shook off an earlier battle with Covid-19 could later experience a more dangerous course of the disease. Some variants can also make Covid-19 vaccines less effective in preventing disease.
As for the version of the variants, it currently appears in similar ways as earlier versions of the virus. “From what we can see from the work we have done through the Covid symptom study, we have not yet seen any noticeable differences in terms of the symptoms that people experience,” Chan said.
A UK survey found that the B.1.1.7 variant led to subtle changes in symptoms. “People who tested positive for the new British variant were more likely to report any symptoms and the classic symptoms, but were less likely to report loss of taste and smell,” according to the UK Office for National Statistics .
But the US does not do enough genetic surveillance to easily identify new mutations in the virus as they arise. A sudden change in symptoms may eventually be the warning sign that another new variant has arrived. And even more symptoms that doctors have not previously appreciated may still appear.
“It just says we need to be humble and realize that we know very little about this virus and keep an open mind,” Spector said.
Subscribe to The Weeds Newsletter. Every Friday you get an outline of a major policy story of the week, a look at important research that has come out recently, and answers to reader questions – to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration.