If your symptoms appear in this order, you probably have COVID, study finds

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While there is a wide variety of symptoms reported by patients with COVID, researchers have started to find patterns. In fact, a new study has broken down the order in which objective and discernible symptoms of COVID are likely to appear. If you are infected with a case that is not asymptomatic, you may fever, then cough and muscle pain, followed by nausea and / or vomiting, then diarrhea.

The disease caused by the coronavirus usually follows this path, according to the study published in the Public health at borders August 13 newspaper. First, a patient develops fever, then symptoms of the upper respiratory tract, and finally symptoms of the upper and then lower gastrointestinal tract. The least likely path, according to this study, would be diarrhea first, then nausea and / or vomiting, followed by cough and finally fever.

But the order seems to be generally the same no matter where it starts. For example, if a COVID patient’s first symptom is diarrhea, then their other symptoms will follow as noted above – thus, diarrhea followed by fever, then cough and muscle pain, and finally, nausea and / or vomiting.

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The researchers note that it is important to discern the probable order of symptoms of the coronavirus to distinguish these cases from other respiratory diseases. After all, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend asking your doctor about COVID-19 if you start to have a cough and fever – however , these are also two common symptoms of the flu.

“The importance of knowing the early symptoms is rooted in the need to stop the spread of COVID-19, a disease that is two to three times more transmissible than the flu and leads to cluster outbreaks,” the study said. “The risk of transmission of COVID-19 is increased, so faster testing and social distancing are important, especially when social distancing and quarantine measures are relaxed.”

Fortunately for diagnostic purposes, researchers have found that the order in which new coronavirus symptoms appear differs from influenza and other coronavirus-based illnesses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). According to the study, the flu usually comes from a cough, not a fever, like the coronavirus. Like influenza, MERS and SARS are similar to coronavirus but differ in that the order of diarrhea comes from before nausea and / or vomiting.

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Healthcare worker checking body temperature of sick young man with non-contact digital infrared thermometer.

To compare their COVID data more directly to these other respiratory illnesses, the researchers also added sore throat, myalgia and headache – all reported symptoms of these illnesses – to their calculations in another model. However, even studying these symptoms alongside the first four, they found that the pattern generally remains the same. A fever is usually the first symptom, followed by a cough. And then, across the seven symptoms, sore throat, myalgia, and headache usually appear next, but in no particular order. Then, like the original set, nausea and / or vomiting is the second to last symptom, followed by diarrhea, as the last. And to learn more about how COVID can affect your body, check out the 98 Longest Lasting COVID Symptoms You Need To Know.

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