England’s deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam on Monday, May 18 announced the addition of loss of taste and smell to the official list of Coronavirus symptoms in the country.
Van-Tam said victims of anosmia (the clinical name for a loss of smell) will also be eligible for Coronavirus testing even if they don’t have other symptoms. Before now, only Brits with a new fever or persistent cough were told to self-isolate and allowed to get tested.
The deputy chief medical officer:-
“Our basic case definition for some time has been a new continuous cough or fever. That will change to a new continuous cough, or fever, or anosmia.
“Anosmia can continue for days and weeks after you’ve recovered from Covid and that is not in itself – the same as cough – is not a reason to stay home longer than the 7 day isolation period for a suspected case.
“The reason for making the change now is that there has been a signal around the importance of anosmia as a symptom of Covid for a while now.
“It’s been important to continue to look at that and be sure that we consider it and introduce it at the right time when we think it’s going to make a difference to how we pick up cases.
“But let’s be clear, this has been quite a difficult piece of science because there’s a distinction between whether anosmia can occur with Covid-19 versus whether it occurs early enough to be a useful help in detecting more cases.”
