LONDON – The UK government updated its coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) advice on Monday, adding the loss of smell and taste to the list of symptoms induced by a coronavirus.
“From today, all individuals should self-isolate if they develop a new continuous cough or fever or anosmia,” the government statement said.
“Anosmia” is the loss or a change in your normal sense of smell. It can also affect your sense of taste as the two are closely linked.
“We have been closely monitoring the emerging data and evidence on Covid-19 and after thorough consideration, we are now confident enough to recommend this new measure.
“The individual’s household should also self-isolate for 14 days as per the current guidelines and the individual should stay at home for seven days, or longer if they still have symptoms other than cough or loss of sense of smell or taste.”
The statement was signed by the four chief medical officers of the United Kingdom: Prof. Chris Whitty in England, Dr. Gregor Smith in Scotland, Dr. Frank Atherton in Wales, and Dr. Michael McBride in Northern Ireland.
The other two official symptoms of coronavirus are a persistent cough and high fever.
Other countries, including the US, have already added the symptom to their official list. Some have criticized the British government for not adding anosmia to their list of symptoms sooner.
Prof. Nirmal Kumar, the president of ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat surgery) UK told the Daily Mail: “We’re relieved that this has finally been accepted but we alerted people about this eight weeks ago. Everyone else, including the World Health Organization, took it up urgently, but it has certainly taken too long here.
“The prevalence is widespread. We used to see these patients occasionally but now we see them regularly. If we had recognized this earlier, we would have reduced the spread. The reproduction rate of the virus would have been lower.”
Deputy chief medical officer Prof. Jonathan Van-Tam said on Monday: “The reason for making the change now is that there has been a signal around the importance of anosmia as a symptom of Covid-19 for a while now.
“It has been important to continue to look at that and be sure that we consider it and introduce it at the right time,” he said. “This has been quite a difficult piece of science.”
“With a cough or fever, sensitivity was around 91 percent,” Van-Tam told journalists in a telephone briefing in the morning. “By adding anosmia, in terms of case pick-up, we think that might go to 93 percent.”
Since the virus emerged in China last December, it has spread to 188 countries and regions.
The global death toll from Covid-19 has reached 318,465, with more than 4.8 million confirmed cases, and recoveries topping 1.78 million, according to a running tally by the US’s Johns Hopkins University.
The US remains the hardest-hit country by the pandemic with more than 1.5 million confirmed cases and 90,340 deaths.
It is followed by the UK with 34,876 fatalities and Italy with 32,007.
A total of 28,242 people in France have lost the battle against the virus followed by Spain with 27,709 fatalities.
Meanwhile, Russia has the second-highest number of cases at nearly 291,000, followed by Brazil, the UK, Spain, and Italy.
China, ground zero of the virus, has registered 84,063 cases so far and its death toll continues to stand at 4,638.