Lost sense of smell, taste emerges as telltale signs
After National Basketball Association player Rudy Gobert caught the coronavirus, he wondered whether others had suffered the same loss of smell and taste he experienced.
“Just to give you guys an update, loss of smell and taste is definitely one of the symptoms, haven’t been able to smell anything for the last four days,” Gobert tweeted. “Anyone experiencing the same thing?”
Turns out many have. A sudden, unexplained loss of these senses is an early symptom reported among COVID-19 patients in South Korea, China and Italy, according to ENT U. K., which represents ear, nose and throat surgery professionals in the U. K. Either total or partial loss of smell, known medically as anosmia, may be an initial telltale sign of COVID-19 infection.
The feature is important because it might help identify people at risk for the coronavirus infection who require testing and isolation, as well as alert surgeons to cases where conducting transnasal and sinus operations could be hazardous. Fourteen people were infected after a patient in China with the coronavirus underwent endoscopic pituitary surgery, likely dispersing the virus from the nasal cavity.
“It’s evidence that’s emerging day by day,” said Simon Carney, professor of ear, nose and throat surgery at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, in a phone interview. “It’s important that this information be put in the public domain” for health authorities to review.
Gobert tested positive for coronavirus March 11, leading to the postponement of Utah’s game in Oklahoma and the costly suspension of the NBA season hours later. Other leagues followed shortly thereafter and the Jazz announced that a second player, later revealed to be Donovan Mitchell, had tested positive.
Gobert has admitted to being “careless” after mockingly touching reporters’ mics and recording devices during a news conference March 9, before his positive test. He has since apologized and pledged US$ 500,000 to efforts aimed at offering relief to workers affected by the NBA shutdown.
“I hope my story serves as a warning and causes everyone to take this seriously,” he said last week in an Instagram message. In a video posted by the NBA last week, he thanked everyone “for the positive energy” and said he was “feeling a little better every day.” He also admitted regret again about his actions. “It’s all about protecting yourself,” he said, “and the people around you. I wish I would have ( taken) this thing more seriously, and I hope everyone else (will) do so because we can do it together. Take care, and stay safe.”
Anosmia is a symptom that occurs frequently after cold-like viral infections. But it’s not included in the definitions that health-care workers use to identify possible COVID-19 cases, according to Carney.
Often the sensory loss occurs in coronavirus patients in the absence of other symptoms. It may be driven by the fact that the highest concentrations of the virus can be detected in patients’ nasal cavities around the time they develop symptoms.
“It is these ‘silent carriers’ who may remain undetected by current screening procedures, which may explain why the disease has progressed so rapidly in so many countries,” said Carney, who is the outgoing president of the Australia and New Zealand Rhinologic Society.