In a new study, researchers have found the likely order in which COVID-19 symptoms first appear: fever, cough, muscle pain, and then nausea, and/or vomiting, and diarrhea.
Knowing the order of COVID-19’s symptoms may help patients seek care promptly or decide sooner than later to self-isolate, the scientists say.
It also may help doctors rule out other illnesses. Recognizing the order of symptoms also could help doctors plan how to treat patients, and perhaps intervene earlier in the disease.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Southern California.
In the study, the team predicted the order of symptoms this spring from the rates of symptom incidence of more than 55,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in China, all of which were collected from Feb. 16-Feb. 24, 2020, by the World Health Organization.
They also studied a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases collected from Dec. 11, 2019, through Jan. 29, 2020, by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group via the National Health Commission of China.
To compare the order of COVID-19 symptoms to influenza, the researchers examined data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe, and the Southern Hemisphere, which were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.
They found the upper GI tract (i.e., nausea/vomiting) seems to be affected before the lower GI tract (i.e., diarrhea) in COVID-19, which is the opposite of MERS and SARS.
Fever and cough are frequently linked to a variety of respiratory illnesses, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
But the timing and symptoms in the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract set COVID-19 apart.
The team says the order of the symptoms matter.
Knowing that each illness progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner whether someone likely has COVID-19, or another illness, which can help them make better treatment decisions.
This order is especially important to know when people have overlapping cycles of illnesses like the flu that coincide with infections of COVID-19.
Doctors can determine what steps to take to care for the patient, and they may prevent the patient’s condition from worsening.
One author of the study is doctoral candidate Joseph Larsen.
The study is published in Frontiers in Public Health.
Copyright © 2020 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
