Corona warning signs: what applies at what age?

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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There are early corona symptoms that are now ringing alarm bells everywhere: loss of smell, coughing and shortness of breath, for example. For other complaints, it occurs to few people to get tested - especially if they have already been vaccinated.

The insidious: Depending on age and gender, different early symptoms dominate. Some of them hardly anyone has on their radar. This is now shown by a study by King's College London.

Claire Steves' researchers evaluated the data from an app in which more than 180,000 participants entered symptoms that they had observed in themselves. It was then checked which participants had subsequently actually tested positive for Covid-19. The researchers compared the results with the age and gender of the participants.

Important early symptoms

A total of 18 symptoms were found to be relevant for the early detection of Covid-19. This does not necessarily mean that these symptoms were also common. If they occur, however, they are an important indicator of a possible Sars-CoV-2 infection.

The main early signs of Covid-19 were

• Loss of smell,
• Chest pain,
• persistent cough,
• Stomach pain,
• Blisters on the feet,
• Eye pain as well
• unusual muscle pain.

Age differences

However, the loss of the sense of smell became less important in people over the age of 60 and was no longer relevant for those over 80. On the other hand, other early symptoms such as diarrhea occurred more frequently in the older age groups (60-79 and> 80).

Fever, on the other hand, is known as a possible Covid 19 symptom, but was not a common early symptom in any age group.

However, that doesn't mean you can ignore a fever or other symptoms if they're not typical of your age group. Sars-CoV-2 is an unpredictable pathogen that can manifest itself in a variety of forms at any age.

Early symptoms in both men and women

Different tendencies for early symptoms could also be seen in the sexes:

Men observed more often

• Shortness of breath,
• Fatigue and
• Chills.

Women reported of

• Loss of smell and
• persistent cough.

Early suspicion, early test

Taking into account the age and gender of the patient in the event of a suspected Covid 19 actually turned out to be quite reliable: an evaluation with the support of artificial intelligence based on the reported symptoms in combination with age and gender information found a Sars-CoV-2 infection predict with 80 percent confidence within three days.

"It is important that people know that the earliest symptoms are very different and, for example, can express themselves differently in each household member," says study director Steves. This is particularly true in view of the new Sars-CoV-2 variants, which are highly transferable. The researchers therefore recommend testing for Sars-CoV-2 for a wider range of symptoms.

"We hope that this will encourage more people to get tested as early as possible in order to minimize the risk of spreading," says first author Dr. Liane dos Santos Canas. This also applies to those who have been completely vaccinated, because they can also get sick and pass the virus on.

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