Loss of taste and smell is added to list of symptoms
But why the 8-week wait after doctors’ warning?
LOSING a sense of taste or smell has been added to the Government’s list of coronavirus symptoms following concerns thousands of cases were being missed.
Anyone who develops the condition – known medically as anosmia – will now be advised to self-isolate for seven days.
Scientists had warned that up to 70,000 cases were being missed at any one time because the symptom was not officially recognised by ministers.
Doctors first warned the Government about the condition eight weeks ago but its own panel of researchers concluded it was not significant enough to be counted. Since then the World Health Organisation, the EU, as well as France and the US, have all started including the symptom among a list of key warning signs.
In a change of heart yesterday, the UK’s four chief medical officers jointly announced that anyone with either a loss or change to their sense of taste or smell should self-isolate for seven days.
The symptom will be added to the official Government website, NHS Choices and the app, which is still in development – alongside a continuous cough or high temperature.
At her briefing yesterday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there was now ‘sufficient evidence to add an additional symptom which you should look out for’.
Earlier yesterday Professor Tim Spector, an expert in genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, warned that up to half of coronavirus cases were being missed because anosmia and other signs, including fatigue, were not counted.
‘There’s no point telling people to be alert if they don’t know the symptoms,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘We’re probably missing at the moment between 50 and 70,000 people out there who are infected.’
But the Government’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam said the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group had been researching whether adding the symptom to the list would make any difference to the number of cases picked up.
Professor Spector said last night the inclusion of loss of taste and smell was a ‘step in the right direction but we feel more symptoms should be added’.
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