A new study on the global pandemic has found that those who contract COVID-19 may exhibit a predictable sequence of symptoms, and the sequence differs from what we experience with flu and other coronaviruses.
To date, the most probable sequence of initial COVID-19 symptoms proves tendency to start with a fever and then progress to a cough and muscle ache, followed by nausea and / or vomiting, and finally diarrhea.
While the symptoms themselves are not particularly unique, the order in which they arrive is different from other respiratory viruses, and the authors think that their model could help to distinguish new cases, and thus help us limit the spread of the disease.
Using World Health Organization (WHO) data from more than 55,000 confirmed cases in China, the authors compared the sequence of symptoms of COVID-19 with thousands of cases of influenza collected by the University of Michigan, about 150 cases of acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the Toronto area, and a handful of cases of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) have been reported in Korea.
A flu infection was found to start with a cough and dan a fever. And although MERS and SARS may start similarly to COVID-19, the lower gastrointestinal tract is usually affected first, leading to diarrhea in front of nausea and vomiting.
“The order of the symptoms is important,” says Joseph Larsen, who researches computational biology and bioinformatics at the University of Southern California.
“Knowing that each disease progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner if someone is likely to have COVID-19, or another disease that may help them make better treatment decisions.”
When the researchers simulated the symptoms of COVID-19 for 500,000 patients, they found “a most common sequence of observational symptoms … which is also different from other leading respiratory diseases.”
Even when the authors included other symptoms such as neck pain, headache, and fatigue, the order of the four most likely initial symptoms remained the same.
Since fever usually seems to come first, taking the temperature can be a valid screening mechanism.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already recommends that people take their temperature before leaving isolation to make sure it is safe, and this new study supports that.
“We do not present initial symptoms as a diagnostic test, but instead as a possible sign to test,” the authors write.
COVID-19 is more contagious than influenza and it has a tendency to break out in clusters. If we can better inform the public about its sequence of symptoms, this can help us identify the cases more quickly and quarantine them before spreading further.
Bob Lahita, a rheumatologist not involved in the study, told CBS News that the new model of symptoms was “a good guide.”
Even if the disease does not present exactly the same in everyone, it can pay close attention to initial symptoms of respiratory infections, we can place typical cycle cycles of today’s global pandemic.
The study was published in Frontiers in public health.
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