Patients with COVID-19 have reported a wide range of symptoms, and some symptoms appear more frequently for different variants of the virus, sore throat, headache, runny nose, congestion, cough, low back pain, fatigue. Vaccinated people are usually asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms if they contract the delta variant. Its symptoms are more like those of a common cold, such as cough, fever, or headache, with the addition of significant loss of smell. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, early symptoms of COVID-19 often include fatigue, headache, sore throat, or fever.
Some patients also experience a loss of taste or smell as an early symptom or as a first symptom. They are known to develop at the beginning of an infection, with respiratory symptoms possibly after a day later, according to an article in Emerson Health. In general, symptoms usually appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus, according to the CDC. Another concern is that genetic adjustments can make it easier for the virus to bypass antibodies, the protective proteins produced by the body in response to a vaccine or infection of a previous variant.
Fewer than a third of people surveyed reported fever, according to data from Zoe's COVID symptom study, which allows people to self-report symptoms through smartphone apps. Recent research has found that the delta variant grows more rapidly, and at much higher levels, in the respiratory tract. The latter variants tend to settle in the nasal passage and cause infection, he said, rather than settling in the lungs. The latest mutant has been discovered in several distant states of India, and it seems to be spreading faster than other variants there, said Lipi Thukral, a scientist at the Scientific and Industrial Research Council at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi.
Studies have found that the most common symptoms caused by Omicron are similar to those caused by other variants. With new variants and subvariants of COVID behind many positive cases in Chicago and other parts of the country, many are wondering if symptoms are changing with newer variants as more begin to experience them. President Joe Biden today announced new measures in an effort to combat the Omicron variant of coronavirus. According to Grubaugh and other doctors, the best way to prevent new variants is to get vaccinated and get booster shots.
UC Davis Health patients can use the MyUCDavisHealth symptom tracker to assess if they should seek help. He said that while there is no evidence that variants make people sicker than previous strains of the virus, “increased transmission among older age groups is starting to translate into serious illness.
