[ad_1]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tripled its official list of symptoms for the new coronavirus.
Until recently, the federal health agency recorded only three symptoms of the virus on its website: fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
However, this past weekend, the CDC expanded its list to include several more signs of infection, including chills, repeated tremors with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and a new loss of taste or smell.
Previously, the CDC had only three coronavirus symptoms on its website: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Pictured: A COVID-19 blood test is performed outside Delmont Medical Care in Franklin Square, New York, April 22
This weekend, the agency expanded its list to include chills, repeated tremors with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and new loss of taste or smell. Pictured: Nurse Anne Boyd (right) holds a phone in a coronavirus patient’s ear so she can hear her daughter speak to him in the ICU of Sharp Grossmont Hospital in San Diego, California on April 22
It comes after several doctors told federal authorities that their coronavirus patients were complaining of previously unknown symptoms. Pictured: Nurse Paula Johnson administers a deep suction tube into the lungs of a coronavirus patient in the ICU of Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on April 22
Healthcare workers began calling attention to many of the new symptoms, such as loss of taste and smell, last month.
In March, the American Academy of Otolaryngology asked the CDC to add anosmia, the inability to smell, to its list of possible signs of coronavirus.
At the time, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was investigating a possible link between the two, but the evidence was preliminary.
“Loss of smell or taste is something we are investigating,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, told reporters on March 23.
“We are reaching several countries and analyzing the cases that have already been reported to see if this is a common feature. We still don’t have the answer for that.
Furthermore, a study jointly conducted by Italy and the UK and published this week found that 64 percent of coronavirus patients reported an “altered sense of smell or taste.”
Dr. James Denneny, executive vice president and CEO of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, says that when companies begin to reopen, anyone with this symptom should be tested or quarantined.
“In a significant percentage of people, it is a symptom that can be used when others are not there,” he told WGME.
“If you have a sudden change in taste or smell, it shows … that this may be the initial marker, so you don’t want to spread it.”
Similarly, a WHO report on cases of Chinese coronaviruses revealed symptoms that doctors were not previously aware of.
About 40 percent of 56,000 patients said they experienced fatigue, nearly 14 percent said they had headaches, and about 12 percent said they had chills.
As more patients told doctors they had similar symptoms, the doctors urged the CDC to include them on the list.
In the United States, there are more than 871,000 confirmed cases of the virus and more than 49,000 deaths.
