Losing your sense of smell and taste might be the best way to tell if you have COVID-19, according to a study of data collected via a symptom tracker app developed by British scientists to help monitor the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus.
Almost 60 percent of people who subsequently tested positive for the novel coronavirus had reported losing their sense of smell and taste, the data analyzed by the researchers showed.
That compared with 18 percent of those who tested negative.
These results, which were posted online, but not peer-reviewed, were much stronger in predicting a positive COVID-19 diagnosis than self-reported fever, the researchers at King’s College London said.
Of 1.5 million app users between Tuesday last week and Sunday, 26 percent reported one or more symptoms through the app. Of these, 1,702 also reported having been tested for COVID-19, with 579 positive results and 1,123 negative results.
Using all of the data collected, the research team developed a mathematical model to identify which combination of symptoms — ranging from loss of smell and taste to fever, persistent cough, fatigue, diarrhea, abdominal pain and loss of appetite — was most accurate in predicting COVID-19 infection.
“When combined with other symptoms, people with loss of smell and taste appear to be three times more likely to have contracted COVID-19 according to our data, and should therefore self-isolate for seven days to reduce the spread of the disease,” said Tim Spector, a professor at the university who led the study.
Spector’s team applied their findings to the more than 400,000 people reporting symptoms via the app who had not yet had a COVID-19 test, and found that almost 13 percent of them were likely to be infected.
This would suggest that about 50,000 people in Britain might have as-yet-unconfirmed COVID-19 infections, Spector said.
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