Covid-19 disease causes by SARS-CoV-2 virus, causes inflammation in respiratory tract. Most of the symptoms of covid-19 includes fever and cough which is very similar with the symptoms of many diseases such as flu.
Many of the doctors, health experts and researchers conducted surveys and studies to know about the symptoms.
Fever is the primary symptom of covid-19. However many of the physicians who are working with the patients says about the unpredictability of covid-19 symptoms.
In some cases symptoms shows within 15 days while in some cases even after 15 days symptoms doesn’t show.
As mentioned above that Common symptoms of covid-19 are fever and cough and they are exactly same as seasonal flu.
It is quite difficult to distinguish whether fever is caused due to flu or it caused by covid-19 in the season full of the flu.
To resolve this issue a new study point out how symptoms of covid-19 distinguish with the others and people can easily find out if the cough and fever is just common fever or they indicates covid-19.
A study conducted by university of southern California successfully determines that symptoms of covid-19 often start in a certain order.
This result might be a big help to the people having covid-19 to do self isolation or quarantine and get treatment as soon as possible. This leads significantly improvement in the patient outcomes.
Peter Kuhn, PhD, an author and professor of medicine, biomedical engineering, and aerospace and mechanical engineering at USC says that “This order is especially important to know when we have overlapping cycles of illnesses like the flu that coincide with infections of COVID-19”.
With this certain order of the covid-19 symptoms doctors can easily determine what next step should be taken for the care of the patient and may prevent the worst scenario of the patient condition.
Chinese data helps in determination of symptoms of covid-19
In order to predict the symptoms of the covid-19, scientists studied the rate of symptom incidences for over 55,000 confirmed cases of coivd-19 in china which was collected by the world health organization (WHO).
They analyze the data of 1,100 cases which was collected between December 2019 and January 2020 by the china medical treatment expert group of covid-19 (National Health Commission of China).
Some of the researchers analyzed data for over 2,000 influenza cases in north America, Europe and southern hemisphere reported to the health authorities between 1994 and 1998 to compare the certain order of the covid-19 symptoms to the symptoms of influenza.
Covid-19 symptoms
As a result of various studies, there is a certain order of covid-19 symptoms and people positive with covid-19 experiences are as:
- Fever
- Cough and muscle pain
- Nausea or vomiting
- Diarrhea
According to a study done by Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at lenox hill hospital in New York, “patients with seasonal flu more commonly developed cough before the fever”.
He said that is is quite difficult to discern because flu also begins with the symptoms including back pain, chills along with the dry cough. He also said that this result also useful in evaluating multiple patients in a busy clinic setting.
So as it is clear according to the findings of the research that flu starts with the cough while covid-19 starts with the fever as its primary symptom.
The author of the this study wrote that “Our results support the notion that fever should be used to screen for entry into facilities as regions begin to reopen after the outbreak of Spring 2020,” the study authors wrote.
There is a broad range of covid-19 symptoms
Working as a emergency physician giving treatment to many covid-1 patient Glatter shared his experience.
He said “In general, while fever is usually the most commonly described initial symptom of COVID-19 infection, the reality of what I see on the front lines is more variable,”
He said some patients are there only with the loss of taste and smell and not feeling well. He also seen some covid-19 positive cases only with the “covidtoes” which is a condition associated with reddish blue discoloration of the skin in response to acute inflammation while fever, cough and pain was absent.
According to Glatter some patients have malaise, headache and dizziness as a symptom of coivd-19 which resemble with the symptoms of stroke in some way. They don’t have any fever, cough or any other symptom associated with respiratory symptoms.
“The onset of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after onset of respiratory symptoms such as fever and cough may also suggest that a person may have COVID-19” explained Glatter.
So to be concise fever is not only the symptom of covid-19, they also include chest pain discoloration of skin, headache etc.
To understand the progression of symptoms of covid-19
Glatter said that is it most important to understand the progression of the symptoms of the covid-19 positive person so that spread of the disease can be stopped.
He also find sudden loss of senses like smell and taste may be play an important role in differentiate covid-19 infection to the influenza.
Symptoms of covid-19 produced by different variants of covid-19?
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that multiple variants are there which roaming all over the world. So there are three following variants that are monitored by the CDC:Top of ForBottom of Form
Variant B.1.1.7. This variant of covid-19 was first identified in the united kingdomin December. It was found that it can spread more quickly than other variants and may be associated with the higher risk of death than other variants. To confirm this fact there is more research is needed.
Variant B.1.351. this variant was identified in October in South Africa, and after that detected in the United States in December.
Variant P.1. This variety of covid-19 was found in the travelers form brazil tested in japan.
In current research it is explained that the B.1.1.7 variant doesn’t affect the respiratory tract or result in lung disease more severely than SARS-CoV-2. The author of the study says that “complete and clearer data on this topic will be ready in the near future.”
In other study it was found that while new corona virus variants might be more infectious in nature they never have evidence that they cause severe disease.
Vismita Gupta-Smith, public information and advocacy officer at the WHO “Now scientists have done the study and as a finding they explained that new variants do tend to spread faster and they are more quick to transmit or can say more infectious in nature.”
In a statement. “However, so far, they do not seem to cause more severe illness or a higher death rate or any sort of different clinical manifestations.”
She additionally said that these variants behave much similar to the SARS CoV-2 and causes same diseases.
Summary
Scientists analyzed for over 50000 cases of covid-19 patient and compared them with the symptoms of flu and found out that covid-19 symptom find in a certain order.
A physician does a study on the symptom and he found that there are many corona patients who d not have fever as a symptom. They experiences headache, loss of taste, loss of smell and malaise as a symptom of covid-19.
Experts with frontline experience emphasize that this progression isn’t always how the disease manifests, but it’s still a useful guide for prevention of healthcare providers.
