COVID-19 Screenings Missing Symptom: Lost Sense Of Smell

Nothing about the way she was feeling made her worry until that Monday morning, just over a week ago, when she went downstairs to feed her cat.

“I went down to my kitchen and opened a can of cat food and realized I couldn’t smell it.”

The woman, who asked that she only be identified by her first initial “C” to protect her family’s privacy, had a sore throat and was feeling fatigued. But she had no fever, cough or shortness of breath, the now familiar symptoms of the coronavirus recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A healthy, energetic 60-year-old, C works as a project coordinator at a health clinic in Rhode Island. She doesn’t have direct contact with patients. Nobody in her office had tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. And she says she’d been vigilant about washing her hands.

But when she still had no sense of smell on Tuesday, she said, she called her primary care doctor. Her doctor, who is affiliated with Brown University,  reported her case to the state Health Department. A nurse from the Health Department then scheduled C to be tested the following day.  “I was reassuring people, including especially my mother, that I didn’t have any of the obvious symptoms of COVID-19 — the fever, coughing,’’  C said, “so I was pretty convinced that it wasn’t’’ the coronavirus.

Her test came back positive for COVID-19.

The loss of smell, or anosmia, is now being recognized by physicians around the globe as one of the telltale signs of COVID-19. On March 20, a group of British ear, nose and throat doctors cited evidence from South Korea, China and Italy in calling on adults who suddenly lose their sense of smell to self-isolate for seven days, even if they have no other symptoms. In South Korea, where testing has been more widespread, the doctors said in a statement , a loss of smell was the major presenting symptom in 30% of patients testing positive for COVID-19 who had otherwise mild cases.

Read the rest of this story at The Public’s Radio’s website.