As we know, Covid symptoms have changed in these two years of the pandemic. While initially the classic symptoms included fever, loss of smell and taste, shortness of breath, today things are different, thanks to the variants but above all to the protection given by vaccines, which have transformed the virus into something that tends to be less dangerous and that it affects the upper respiratory tract, and no longer the lower ones.
Covid, the most common symptoms in these two years of the pandemic
I more frequent Covid symptoms reported since the beginning of the pandemic are these:
- high temperature or chills even in the absence of fever
- cough continues
- loss or change in smell or taste
- shortness of breath
- unjustified tiredness or exhaustion
- scattered pains
- headache
- sore throat
- stuffy or runny nose
- loss of appetite
- diarrhea.
The new symptoms of Omicron 5 and how dangerous they are
The Omicron 5 variant now dominant in many countries it was first discovered in South Africa last February, a month after the identification of the 4 in the same country. Since then, both variants have spread around the world and have sparked concern over a resurgence of Covid infections, both in Europe and in the United States (here we talked about how many swabs you need to do to be sure of the outcome).
A new study published in Nature revealed that Omicron 5 is 4 times more resistant to Covid vaccines. This means that those who have not been vaccinated are about 5 times more likely to contract the virus compared to those who are vaccinated, 7.5 more to develop a severe form of illness with a lot of hospitalization e up to 15 times to die.
What has increased in these two years has also been the emergence of new and different symptoms, never encountered before. The most commonly reported symptoms today are sore throat, sneezing, persistent cough and headache. Experts also explain that today a Covid positive person is more likely to report gut-related symptoms, such as diarrhea, compared to loss of smell.
Here we have talked about the drugs to be taken for Covid at the first symptoms.
A new nocturnal symptom: abnormal and excessive sweating
Another wake-up call, which could tell us we’ve caught Covid, now comes from the UK. In Great Britain, for about a month now, there has been a sharp increase in positive Omicron 5 cases complaining of strong night sweatsabnormal and excessive, unrelated to the high temperatures of this hot summer.
“One more symptom of BA.5 that I have seen is night sweats,” explained Luke O’Neill, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, first. The symptom has gone from being a rare Covid symptom to hitting the11% of patients in the last weekaccording to the app of the ZOE Covid study that is used in the UK for virus monitoring.
However, night sweats are still far less common than most standard symptoms such as sore throat (affecting 56% of Covid positive people), headache (48%) and dry cough (43%).
Responding to why positives are affected by new symptoms, O’Neill explained that the disease is “slightly different because the virus has changed. There is a certain immunity, and that mix of slightly different immune systems and viruses could give rise to even a slightly different disease ”, of which night sweats would be a feature.
“But, very importantly – added the expert – if you are vaccinated, the disease does not progress to severe: this is the message to keep reminding people ”. For the unvaccinated, and even worse if they have never done Covid, things could instead be very different (here what we know about the universal vaccine against all variants).
The new findings on Long Covid: long-term symptoms and who affects the most
As for the post-Covid, more and more people complain of prolonged complaints. Commonly reported prolonged symptoms of Covid, such as fatigue and shortness of breathhave a significant effect on people’s daily activities, quality of life and working capacity.
But in a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine, 62 symptoms associated with Long Covid have now been identified. Much of the work has been done among people who have been hospitalized.
By analyzing the medical records of over 450,000 people in England with a confirmed diagnosis of Covid and 1.9 million people without Covid, from January 2020 to April 2021, it was found that people diagnosed with Covid had a significantly higher probability of reporting the 62 symptoms indicated, only 20 of which are included in the World Health Organization case definition for Long Covid.
These differences in reported symptoms between infected and uninfected groups remained even after taking into account age, gender, ethnic group, socioeconomic status, body mass index, smoking status, presence of more than 80 health conditions, and past reports of the same symptom.
It was also discovered that younger age, female gender, belonging to certain ethnic minority groups, lower socioeconomic status, smoking, obesity, and a wide range of health conditions were all associated with a higher risk of report persistent symptoms more than 12 weeks after Covid infection.
Some of these symptoms were expected, such as loss of smell, shortness of breath and fatigue. But some of the symptoms that have been found to be strongly associated with Covid beyond 12 weeks have been called surprising and lesser known, such as hair loss and the reduced libido. Other symptoms included chest pain, fever, bowel incontinence, erectile dysfunction and swelling of the limbs.
About 80% of the people with Long Covid in the study faced a broad spectrum of symptoms, ranging from fatigue to headaches to pain. The second largest group, accounting for 15%, had predominantly mental and cognitive health symptoms, including depression, anxiety, cognitive fog and insomnia. The third and smallest group, the remaining 5%, had mainly respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, cough and wheezing.