Losing taste and smell now official Coronavirus symptoms
A loss or changed sense of taste or smell are to be added to the NHS coronavirus symptoms list, weeks after experts first raised concerns that Covid-19 cases are being missed.
Anyone suffering loss of taste or smell, or a noticeable change, should now self-isolate for seven days to reduce the risk of spreading the infection, in new advice issued by chief medical officers from all four UK nations.
If the symptomatic person lives with others, they should stay at home for seven days, while all other household members should stay home for 14 days even if they do not have symptoms.
The move means loss of smell or taste will now be listed alongside fever and cough as the main symptoms of Covid-19.
It comes after a major study, published last week by Professor Tim Spector at King's College London, found that people with a positive test result were three times more likely to report loss of smell and taste as a symptom than those who went on to test negative.
He heavily criticised the Government's stance on Monday, saying infected people had been encouraged back to work due to a failure to track symptoms properly.
Prof Spector, head of the department of genetic epidemiology and leader of the Covid symptom study app at King's, said 50,000 to 70,000 people in the UK with Covid-19 were currently not being told to self-isolate even though they had the virus.
He blamed Public Health England (PHE) and the wider strategy, saying an insistence that only fever and cough were the major symptoms was missing thousands of cases.
Until now, the NHS 111 coronavirus symptom checker has listed high temperature and cough as the symptoms of Covid-19.
The World Health Organisationlisted loss of smell and taste as "less common symptoms'' several weeks ago and other countries, including the US, added the symptom.