Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, research on this new disease has been advancing gradually. New symptoms have been discovered in recent months, making it easier to identify an infected person.
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The order of symptom appearance
Some researchers have gone even further. Scientists from the University of Southern California published a study on August 13th in Frontiers in Public Health in which they revealed the order of appearance of COVID-19 symptoms.
The researchers studied data collected by the World Health Organisation from 55,924 Chinese patients contaminated with COVID-19 between February 16th and 24th, 2020. According to this study, the order of symptoms is as follows:
- Fever
- Cough
- Muscle aches and pains
- Headaches/Sore throat
- Nausea/Vomiting
- Diarrhoea
Easily identifying an infected person and differentiating Covid-19 from other diseases
This order of symptoms could be very important because, among other things, it makes it possible to quickly identify an infected patient, whereas tests are not systematic and their results are not immediate.
It would also then be easier to differentiate COVID-19 from other infectious diseases such as influenza for example. Here is the order of appearance of flu symptoms:
- Cough
- Muscle aches and pains
- Headaches/Sore throat
- Fever
- Nausea/Vomiting
- Diarrhoea
For example, fever appears very early in a person infected by the novel coronavirus, while it appears later in a patient with influenza. In addition to this, there are other symptoms specific to COVID-19 such as the sudden loss of sense of smell and/or taste that makes the difference even more noticeable.
