People should self-isolate if they lose their sense of taste or smell because it is a definite symptom of coronavirus, the government has announced today.
Anosmia, the clinical name for a change in smell or taste sense, has become the third symptom of the coronavirus that will be officially recognised by the NHS.
Until now, people were only advised that they might have the virus if they had a fever or a new continuous cough.
But scientists working for the government have now decided there is enough evidence to add anosmia to the list.
According to government guidance, the patient must self-isolate for at least seven days, and everyone in their household should do so for two weeks.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said officials hope adding the symptom to the list will help medics to detect two per cent more patients.
‘With a cough or fever, sensitivity was around 91 per cent,’ he said in a telephone briefing this morning. ‘By adding anosmia, in terms of case pick-up, we think that might go to 93 per cent.’
The decision comes after ministers were last week warned that as many as one in four patients are unaware they have COVID-19 because they don’t get a cough or fever, but do suffer from anosmia or other less well known signs.
Specialist nose and throat doctors have been urging the government to add the symptom to its official list since March and last week said the decision to leave it off ‘amounts to clinical negligence’.
It is not yet clear how many people who catch COVID-19 do lose their sense of smell, and Professor Van-Tam said estimates range from the ‘teens’ to more than 50 per cent.
But data collected by Public Health England about the first few hundreds patients in the UK has convinced officials that there is a strong enough link connecting the two.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted he had lost his sense of smell when he fell ill with the virus, but that it had returned soon after he recovered.
Until today, a new continuous cough had been the only officially recognised symptoms of the coronavirus. Now, anosmia – a lost or changed sense of smell or taste – will be added to the list
Professor Van-Tam said: ‘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… this has been quite a difficult piece of science.’
He said that it was not certain in many cases that people were losing their sense of smell or taste directly because of the coronavirus.
Other viruses which affect the airways are known to have the same effect, including common colds and the flu.
Adding the symptom to the list too soon may have caused confusion or led people without the virus to believe that they had it, the deputy CMO added.
In most cases people’s senses do return to normal after their illness but it is possible that it can be permanent.
The UK’s four chief medical officers, led by Professor Chris Whitty, said in a statement today: ‘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.’
Today’s step comes after government ministers were warned last week that the virus was going undetected in as many as a quarter or people who have it, because they had atypical symptoms.
NERVTAG, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, warned officials last week that more people say they are losing smell or taste than have a cough and fever together.
They called for the public to be given a ‘wider perception’ of signs that could indicate COVID-19, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Professor Peter Openshaw, an experimental medicine expert at Imperial College London, told the newspaper that as many as a quarter of patients could be missed.
He said: ‘In the self-reported symptoms, the loss of sense of smell comes out as a very, very frequent one.
‘But in terms of how often that would actually lead to a diagnosis of COVID, that’s not quite clear…
‘It is important people have a wider perception of how it may present.’
Professor Tim Spector, another researcher at Imperial College, said up to 70,000 infected people might be getting missed because of a too-narrow definition of the major symptoms.
Professor Spector, who runs a COVID Symptom Tracker app collecting data on people’s self-reported symptoms in the UK, said fatigue and muscle pain could also be considered.
He told BBC Radio 4 this morning: ‘This country is missing them all, underestimating cases but also putting people at risk and continuing the epidemic.
‘There’s no point telling people to be alert if they don’t know the symptoms.’
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said today: ‘We’re absolutely sure that other symptoms exist, including symptoms you wouldn’t usually associate with a respiratory virus, such as abdominal pain.
‘Some are so non-specific they would cause more confusion than clarity. Fatigue, for example, is a genuine symptom of COVID but any number of people suffer fatigue for a variety of reasons.’