From a headache to blue toes
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List of Covid 19 symptoms is getting longer
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A doctor examines a corona patient who has tested positive (symbol image).
Photo: dpa / Peter Kneffel
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Paris As the pandemic progresses, more and more symptoms are attributed to Covid-19. If an infection with Sars-Cov-2 initially seemed to have the same effects as common flu, the catalog of symptoms is now getting longer and more bizarre.
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Head, nose, throat, lungs, heart, kidneys, stomach, intestines and even the toes – hardly any area that cannot be affected by the virus.
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It is not new that the same pathogen can cause so many symptoms. The loss of sense of smell or the formation of blood clots, however, appears to be very specific for the pathogen Sars-CoV-2. “Most viruses can damage the tissues in which they reproduce or the immune system that fights the infection,” says University of Kent virologist Jeremy Rossman in the UK.
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Doctors suspect that the unusual inflammatory syndrome, which caused over a hundred children to be hospitalized in New York, London, and Paris, is also related to Covid-19. The cases are similar to Kawasaki syndrome, a vascular disease in children that in rare cases can lead to organ failure.
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Several studies have shown that Covid-19 can cause other life-threatening symptoms in adults, such as strokes, brain swelling and heart damage. Urologists from the medical school in Nanjing, China, reported last week in the journal “Nature Reviews” of patients with severe urological complications, kidney damage and serious effects on male sex hormones.
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The seemingly unusual number of symptoms observed also has to do with the enormous number of infected people. “With a widespread disease, even rare complications often occur,” says infectiologist Babak Javid from Cambridge University Hospital.
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There are more than 4.1 million confirmed Covid 19 cases worldwide. Javid estimates that the actual number of infected people is probably tens or even hundreds of millions. “So if one out of 1,000 or even one out of 10,000 complications develops, there are still thousands affected,” says the doctor.
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General practitioners were the first to take the diverse symptoms into account. “In the beginning we were told to watch out for headaches, fever and a mild cough,” recalls Sylvie Monnoye, a general practitioner in central Paris. “Then came a runny nose and sore throat, followed by digestive problems, stomach pain and severe diarrhea.”
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But the list got longer: wounds in the skin, neurological problems, blue toes, chest pain, loss of taste and smell. “We started to think that everything could be suspicious,” says Monnoye in her protective suit.
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In an internal report, the US health agency CDC analyzed the symptoms of 2,591 corona patients who were hospitalized between March 1 and May 1. Three quarters had chills, fever or cough, and almost as many breathing problems. Almost a third complained of pain and diarrhea, a quarter suffered from nausea or vomiting. About 18 percent had a headache, ten to 15 percent had lung or abdominal problems, a runny nose or sore throat.
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“If someone is seriously ill with Covid-19, they can have problems with blood clots that seem to be more common than with other viruses,” says the infectious disease specialist Javid and concludes: “Compared to the flu, you are more likely to get very sick and die. “
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