Coronavirus symptoms appear in this order, documents say

SCIENTISTS have found the probable order in which symptoms of Covid-19 first appear.

According to researchers at the University of Southern California, symptoms of Covid-19 appear in the following order: fever, cough, muscle pain, then nausea and / or vomiting and diarrhea.

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According to the study conducted by doctoral student Joseph Larsen and colleagues at the USC Michelson Center, knowing how symptoms first appear can help doctors rule out other illnesses.

The order of symptoms has been predicted from more than 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in China which were collected from February 16 to February 24 by the World Health Organization.

The study authors also used a data set of nearly 1,100 cases collected from December 11, 2019 to January 29, 2020 by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group.

Recognizing the order of the symptoms could also help doctors plan how to treat patients and possibly intervene in the disease earlier.

“This order is especially important to know when we have cycles of illnesses like influenza that coincide with COVID-19 infections,” said Dr. Kuhn, professor of medicine, biomedical engineering, and aerospace and mechanical engineering at the ‘USC.

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“Doctors can determine what steps to take to care for the patient and they can prevent the patient’s condition from getting worse.”

“Since there are now better approaches to treatments for COVID-19, identifying patients earlier could reduce hospitalization time,” said Larsen, the study’s lead author.

Fever and cough are frequently associated with various respiratory illnesses, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

But timing and symptoms in the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract distinguish COVID-19.

“The upper gastrointestinal tract (i.e. nausea / vomiting) appears to be affected before the lower gastrointestinal tract (i.e. diarrhea) in COVID-19, which is the opposite of MERS and SARS, “the scientists wrote.

To compare the order of symptoms of COVID-19 to that of the flu, researchers looked at data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the southern hemisphere, which were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.

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“The order of symptoms matters,” said Larsen, the lead author.

“Knowing that each disease progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner if someone is likely to have COVID-19, or another disease, which can help them make better treatment decisions.”

However, these symptoms are the short-term afflictions that patients suffer from.

Some patients who test positive for the virus can suffer from agonizing symptoms for months, scientists warn.

Some people – known as the ‘long haul’ – have reported struggling with the lingering issues despite winning over Covid-19.

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The most common symptom is crippling fatigue, but others have experienced muscle pain and difficulty concentrating.

The World Health Organization has said that for severe or critical patients, the recovery period can last up to six weeks.

But scientists are starting to recognize that for some people, their symptoms do not meet these deadlines.

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