Loss Of Smell Could Reveal Hidden Coronavirus Cases Experts Say

From a mother unable to smell her baby’s nappy to a lawmaker who suddenly could not taste food, some coronavirus patients have described a loss of olfactory senses — and experts say this might be a new way to detect the virus.

Ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists in Britain, the United States, and France have noted a growing number of patients in recent weeks with anosmia — the abrupt loss of smell — and have said this could be a sign of COVID-19 in people who otherwise appear well.

Official figures suggest the coronavirus has infected some 380,000 people as the pandemic proliferates around the world, but with many cases going undetected experts have become concerned about the potential for people without symptoms to spread the virus.

The World Health Organisation lists the most common signs of COVID-19 as fever, tiredness and dry cough.

In Britain, ENT doctors have urged health authorities to advise people with a sudden loss of smell or taste to self-isolate even if they have no other symptoms.

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“Anything we can do to delay transmission is absolutely vital,” Claire Hopkins, the president of the British Rhinological Society, told AFP

Hopkins, who published an open letter on the issue on Friday with ENT UK chief Nirmal Kumar, said she was not surprised when she heard initial reports from Iran and France of COVID-19 patients reporting a loss of smell.

Around 40 percent of cases of sudden loss of smell in adults are caused by post-viral anosmia, she said, and previously known coronaviruses are thought to account for up to 15 percent.

But she said the turning point came when an Italian colleague working in a hospital in the worst-hit north of the country mentioned he had observed a high incidence of loss of smell among frontline health workers.

This led to a flurry of posts on professional message boards.

“We all started to note an increase in patients who were young and otherwise completely asymptomatic presenting with new onset sense of smell loss,” said Hopkins.

Nine out of the 20 patients she saw last week had recently lost their ability to smell.

“That’s extremely unusual,” she said, adding that several of these patients had called Britain’s health authorities concerned about COVID-19 but were told there was no need to self-isolate because it was not a recognised symptom.