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A smartphone app that allows individuals to report symptoms of illness is effective in predicting whether or not they have COVID-19. A loss of smell and taste appears to be one of the clearest indicators of infection, researchers reported yesterday (May 11) in Nature Medicine.
The impairment of these senses is “just such a weird symptom that doesn’t occur with most other diseases so it’s rarely wrong,” Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and a lead author of the study, tells The New York Times.
In the new study, Spector and his colleagues reviewed self-reported data from more than 2.5 million people living in the United States and the United Kingdom. Participants recorded health information on a daily basis, revealing if they were asymptomatic or symptomatic, if they’d been hospitalized, if they had pre-existing medical conditions, and if they had been ...
