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The Mystery of Why People With Covid-19 Lose Their Smell and Taste
New research backs up anecdotal evidence
As the coronavirus crisis escalated across the globe in March, some people with Covid-19 began reporting strange symptoms: the sudden inability to smell or taste.
Near the end of the month, doctors around the world began acknowledging that some Covid-19 patients had these symptoms. By that point, however, most of the reports about the symptoms were anecdotal, shared by doctors on medical message boards. Public health institutions seemed to hesitate to make formal statements on the symptoms’ significance while more and more people shared stories about the inability to smell a diaper or taste the tang of vinegar. It took until April 27 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to say that “new loss of taste or smell” was a potential sign of Covid-19.
Now, formal studies on the unusual symptoms are trickling in. Today in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Italian doctors detail their research on the frequency of these symptoms in 204 Covid-19 patients interviewed over the phone.
As the early anecdotes predicted, the symptoms were fairly common in the sample: About 57% reported a reduction in taste, smell, or both. Nearly 40% had a severe reduction in taste, and…
