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From a headache to blue fingers
:
Covid 19 Symptom List Is Lengthening
Paris As the pandemic progresses, more and more symptoms are attributed to Covid-19. If an infection with Sars-Cov-2 initially seemed to have the same effects as the common flu, the catalog of symptoms is now longer and stranger.
Head, nose, throat, lungs, heart, kidneys, stomach, intestines and even the toes, almost no area that cannot be affected by the virus.
It is not new that the same pathogen can cause so many symptoms. However, the loss of the sense of smell or the formation of blood clots seems to be very specific for the pathogen Sars-CoV-2. “Most viruses can damage the tissues in which they reproduce or the immune system that fights infection,” says University of Kent virologist Jeremy Rossman in the UK.
Doctors suspect that the unusual inflammatory syndrome, which caused the hospitalization of more than a hundred children in New York, London and Paris, is also related to Covid-19. The cases are similar to Kawasaki syndrome, a vascular disease in children that in rare cases can lead to organ failure.
Several studies have shown that Covid-19 can cause other life-threatening symptoms in adults, such as stroke, brain swelling, and heart damage. Urologists at Nanjing School of Medicine, China, reported last week in the journal “Nature Reviews” about patients with severe urological complications, kidney damage and serious effects on male sex hormones.
The apparently unusual number of symptoms observed also has to do with the huge number of infected people. “With widespread disease, even rare complications are common,” says infectologist Babak Javid of Cambridge University Hospital.
There are more than 4.1 million confirmed cases of Covid 19 worldwide. Javid estimates that the actual number of infected people is probably tens or even hundreds of millions. “So if one in 1,000 or even one in 10,000 complications develops, there are still thousands affected,” says the doctor.
General practitioners were the first to account for the various symptoms. “At first they told us to watch out for headaches, fever and a mild cough,” recalls Sylvie Monnoye, a family doctor in central Paris. “Then came a runny nose and sore throat, followed by digestive problems, stomach pain, and severe diarrhea.”
But the list got longer: skin wounds, neurological problems, blue fingers, chest pain, loss of taste and smell. “We started to think that everything could be suspicious,” says Monnoye in his protective suit.
In an internal report, the US health agency CDC analyzed the symptoms of 2,591 corona patients who were hospitalized between March 1 and May 1. Three-quarters had chills, fever or cough, and almost as many respiratory problems. Almost a third complained of pain and diarrhea, a quarter suffered from nausea or vomiting. About 18 percent had a headache, 10 to 15 percent had lung or abdominal problems, a runny nose, or a sore throat.
“If someone is seriously ill with Covid-19, they may have problems with blood clots that appear more frequently than with other viruses,” says infectious disease specialist Javid, concluding: “Compared to the flu, you are more likely to get very sick and die. ” “
