New Study Identifies the Seven Symptoms Most Strongly Associated with COVID Infection

New study leveraging random sampling has some surprising results.

This week, we’re going to talk about COVID symptoms. I know, we’re almost two years into this pandemic — why do we need to talk about symptoms now? The short answer is because testing isn’t ubiquitous enough. We need to know what symptoms are sensitive and specific for COVID in order to know who should be tested or potentially isolated — and with respiratory virus season around the corner, identifying COVID-specific symptoms is more important than ever.

One problem with figuring out what symptoms are seen in COVID, is that most studies look at people who test positive for COVID, and most people get tested when they have symptoms.

This means certain symptoms might become an almost self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way around this is to do random, population-based screening for COVID, and that is exactly what this paper, appearing in PLOS Medicine does.