The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added six symptoms of the novel coronavirus infection to its list, suggesting health experts are learning more about the growing number of ways physicians see the virus affecting patients.
The symptoms, which the top US medical body reports could appear two to 14 days after exposure to the virus, are:
Earlier, the organization listed only three known symptoms: shortness of breath, cough and fever.
Mario Ramirez, the former acting director of the Office of Pandemics and Emerging Threats under President Barack Obama, said the frequency of symptoms in new diseases changes with time, even with recurring illnesses such as seasonal influenza.
The recent additions, he said, reflect the CDC’s confidence in stating: “We can say reliably that these six symptoms go with covid-19.”
Ramirez, who is also an emergency room physician, said that confidence stems in part from the growing number of patients being treated for covid-19 in the United States. Local trends in symptoms, in conjunction with data from other countries, allow the CDC to present information that captures the right segment of the population for testing, he added.
“You don’t want to list 20-something symptoms, especially if half the population has those symptoms,” Ramirez said. “You’re trying to balance targeting the right people to come in for testing, so it must be specific.”
(Source: Washington Post)
/teb
