The covid-19 symptoms to watch out for

7 min readDec 10, 2020

Symptoms of covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, can range from mild to severe. The most common include fever, a dry cough or shortness of breath, but there are other indications you could need to be tested or have a conversation with your doctor.

Not everyone experiences the same symptoms, and the order in which they appear can vary. Some people don’t show any symptoms — what health experts call “asymptomatic” cases — but still could spread the virus to others.

Although this list is not inclusive of every possible symptom, it includes what physicians and health experts have determined are the most common. Some of these symptoms will coincide with one another. Symptoms of a coronavirus infection can emerge anywhere from two to 14 days after exposure to the virus.

Fever, cough or shortness of breath

Fever, cough or shortness of breath are the highest-frequency symptoms of covid-19. According to a study of symptoms in about 11,000 adult covid-19 patients, at least one of these symptoms was reported in 93 percent of cases.

A fever might be the first indication you have a covid-19 infection, according to a recent study that looked at the onset of symptoms.

The fever itself can range from low-grade — maybe only a degree or two higher than normal — to dangerously high. A fever higher than 103 degrees Fahrenheit is considered very high in adults and is a sign of a severe infection.

You can experience chills in which your body feels cold for no apparent reason. It might be a cozy temperature, but you’re still shivering. Chills are most common with a fever, or when a fever is coming on, but they don’t always coincide with fever.

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Cough

The coronavirus is a respiratory illness, so cough is a common symptom, and it can also appear early in the infection. A dry, persistent cough can be a red flag that you have covid-19.

Shortness of breath

Along with the cough can come shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.

Covid-19 can sometimes cause pneumonia, according to Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Johns Hopkins.

Pneumonia occurs when “air sacs in the lungs fill with fluid, limiting their ability to take in oxygen and causing shortness of breath, cough and other symptoms,” Galiatsatos writes.

Shortness of breath caused by covid-19 can be mild or severe enough to require treatment with supplemental oxygen or a ventilator.

Fatigue or muscle aches

Sometimes the only indication that you might have of a viral infection is a general sickly feeling, or what physicians call fatigue — a persistent exhaustion that isn’t solved by getting more sleep.

In extreme cases, people who have suffered from covid-19 describe having barely enough energy to walk to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Some people report muscle aches or general achiness for no other apparent reason.

Fatigue and aches have also been reported by so-called covid-19 “long-haulers,” who continue to experience symptoms of the illness for weeks or months after becoming infected.

Headache

Headache is the most common neurological symptom in covid-19.

Other less-common neurological symptoms could include muscle weakness, tingling or numbness in the hands and feet, dizziness, confusion, delirium, seizures and stroke, according to Harvard Medical School.

Loss or distorted sense of smell or taste

The loss of smell or taste is typically linked to early symptoms of upper-respiratory infections — including previous coronavirus strains — because the virus damages olfactory bulbs that are involved in the sense of smell.

It appears to be more common for people who have covid-19, and it’s possible to lose your sense of smell or taste while experiencing no other symptoms.

Richard Doty, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Smell and Taste Center, told The Washington Post that certain distortions, including one that causes everything to have a fecal-like odor, can make common food and drinks revolting, because flavor is tied to sense of smell. “Even water can become unpleasant,” he said.

The distortions are most common in people who are recovering from covid-19 and starting to get their smell back, according to Justin Turner, medical director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Smell and Taste Center.

Sore throat, congestion or runny nose

A sore throat, congestion or runny nose are less frequently associated with covid-19, but they still occur in enough cases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added them to its list.

A runny nose was reported by about 7 percent of adult patients in the study of symptom frequency, while a sore throat was reported by 35 percent.

It can be difficult to determine whether these symptoms are a result of covid-19 or something more benign, such as allergies.

But allergies, which are an overreaction of the immune system to foreign particles, would not trigger things such as a fever, muscle aches or chills, according to Sally Joo Bailey, an allergist at Allergy Associates of Northern Virginia in Arlington. Those are the classic signs of a viral infection, such as covid-19.

Stomach issues

Studies have found that about half of coronavirus patients experience at least one gastrointestinal symptom, which can include loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain or discomfort.

A key difference is the transmissivity: The coronavirus spreads more easily than the flu. Public health officials have encouraged everyone to get vaccinated against the flu this year to help ward off a bad flu season superimposed on a pandemic — and having had a flu shot could also help rule it out if you start to experience any of these symptoms.

Ultimately, infectious-disease doctors say most people won’t be able to tell which illness they have. Common warning signs for both include fever, cough, chills and shortness of breath.

The one symptom that’s common with covid-19, but not with the flu, is loss of taste and smell. But not everyone with covid-19 experiences that symptom, and experts warned that someone with allergies or a cold might also struggle to smell because they have a stuffy nose.

The FDA advisory committee heard from Steven Goodman, an associate dean at the Stanford University School of Medicine, on a thorny ethical question: how to handle the placebo group in the Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trial after the agency issues an emergency use authorization for the vaccine.

Several participants in the trial have argued that anyone in the placebo group should be given the vaccine if they ask for it.

But Goodman said such participants should not automatically get the vaccine if they wouldn’t be eligible under priority-group guidelines developed for people outside clinical trials. In other words, they don’t get moved to the front of the line simply because they are taking part in a trial.

“As long as there are still important things to learn about the vaccine, placebo-controlled trials should not be regarded as unethical, however — and this is a big however, they might be infeasible,” he said.

Pfizer has said it is “actively exploring ways” to give participants in the placebo group the vaccine when they would normally be eligible — because of age and other risk factors — if they were not in the trial. But that means “unblinding” the trial — telling the participants who got the real shot, which the FDA worries would hurt the ongoing trial’s efforts to collect data over the longer term.

Goodman suggested a different approach that he said would be both ethical and practical. If placebo-group participants asked for the vaccine after authorization, they could be “crossed over” into the vaccine group and given the shot, assuming they are eligible under priority-group guidelines. They wouldn’t be told that they had not gotten the shot initially. If those in the vaccinated group asked for the shot (not knowing they had already gotten it), they could be given a placebo shot.