The order in which symptoms of COVID-19 appear depends on the variant of the virus with which the patient is infected, researchers from the University of Southern California found. We know from other studies what symptoms accompany an infection with the Omikron variant and which of them appears first.
Led by Dr. Peter Kuhn, the team developed a mathematical model that predicts the order in which individual COVID-2020 symptoms will occur, based on data collected during the initial phase of the epidemic in China (early 19). Scientists wanted, among others know if the order of symptoms differs in patients from different geographic regions or whether it depends on the specific characteristics of a given person. They tested the model on 373883 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the US between January and May 2020.
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Surprisingly, the most likely order of symptoms differed greatly between the initial pandemic period in China, where fever most often preceded cough, and nausea and vomiting were the third most common symptoms, and the later stage when the virus also spread to the US. In the latter situation, cough was the most likely first symptom, and diarrhea was the third most likely symptom.
- A characteristic symptom of Omicron. “Nobody knows why this is so”
By analyzing additional data from Brazil, Hong Kong and Japan, the team then showed that the different order of covid symptoms is not so much related to the geographical region, weather or patient characteristics, but to different SARS-CoV-2 variants.
The presence of one of the first virus variants – D614G (which was dominant in the US in early 2020) in an area, was associated with a higher likelihood of coughing as the first symptom of COVID-19. When the original reference strain from Wuhan was replaced by D614G in Japan, the order of symptoms in patients changed as well.
“Our findings indicate that the order of the symptoms changes as the virus mutates,” the authors say. As they add, this order is very important, because it largely determines the strength of the spread of the virus. For example, the D614G variant turned out to be more contagious than the original variant because infected people – before the fever hit them – would go to work or shops where they coughed, spreading the infection to others.
Author: Katarzyna Czechowicz
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