One in 10 Covid patients who lose their taste and smell may never get it back

Data gathered by the organisation ENT UK, which represents ear, nose and throat specialists, suggests the inability to smell — and often taste — may be the very first symptom of COVID-19 and start within hours of infection. 

Many people appear not to develop any further signs, making a full recovery without even realising they had the coronavirus. They are thought to be mostly healthy young adults whose immune systems react sufficiently to the virus to contain it within the nose, preventing it spreading to the lungs, where it can cause potentially fatal pneumonia.

As a result, warns ENT UK, some COVID-19 patients are not being identified as infected or advised to self-isolate – and may well be spreading the virus to others.

‘I have seen a huge increase in the number of patients attending my clinic with a sudden loss of smell,’ says Professor Nirmal Kumar, president of ENT UK and an ear, nose and throat specialist at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Trust.

‘It’s up to about four patients a week, mostly under 40 and with no other COVID-19 symptoms. I usually see no more than one a month.’

Professor Kumar is advising patients with no obvious explanation for their loss of smell to self-isolate for at least seven days in case they have Covid-19, even though this is not the current government recommendation. 

ENT UK has called on officials in the UK to recognise the symptoms as signs of coronavirus infection. 

Past president of ENT UK, Dr Tony Narula, added: ‘Normally, when you get a cold or flu virus, you get a blocked nose and lose some smell because you can’t get air (which carries smells with it) into the nostrils,’ he says.

‘With Covid-19 it’s different. The virus seems to strike directly at the olfactory nerve at the roof of the nose, just between the eyes.

‘One reason so many people are suffering is that this nerve is not covered in protective tissue, so the virus attacks it and causes inflammation which stops smell signals reaching the brain.’