Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, every day has brought new knowledge about the symptoms of Covid-19. From head to toes, through the lungs and even the kidneys, symptoms are legion.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for a virus to cause so many manifestations, but certain symptoms of SARS-CoV-2, such as loss of smell or the formation of blood clots, seem very specific to this epidemic.
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Affected children too
Most viruses can damage tissue where it reproduces, or cause collateral damage to the immune system that fights infection, says Jeremy Rossman, virology expert at the University of Kent.
Doctors suspect Covid-19 is responsible for the hospitalization of dozens of children in New York, London and Paris with rare multi-systemic inflammatory conditions, suggesting an atypical form of Kawasaki disease or syndrome toxic shock, which attacks the walls of the arteries and can cause organ failure.
Dozens of medical studies have described other potentially lethal consequences of the disease, including stroke and heart damage.
Researchers at Nanjing University of Medicine (China) have reported cases of patients who developed urinary complications and acute kidney damage.
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They observed upheavals in the male sex hormones, advising the young men eager to have children to consult when cured.
“Beware of just about everything”
Is this spectrum of symptoms unique? Not necessarily. In a common disease, complications, even rare, will occur frequently, decrypts Babak Javid, specialist in infectious diseases of the Cambridge University Hospital Center.
More than 4 million cases have been reported worldwide, but the true number of infections could reach tens or even hundreds of millions, according to Babak Javid. If one person in a thousand, even in ten thousand, develops complications, that still makes thousands of people.
General practitioners were the first to try to identify patterns in the evolution of the epidemic.
We were told at the start: fever, headache, small cough. We were added: runny nose, itchy throat. Then there were the digestive symptoms: diarrhea, stomach ache, remembers Sylvie Monnoye, family doctor in Paris.
Then pains in the rib cage, loss of taste and smell, skin lesions like hives or frostbite on the toes, neurological disorders … We began to say that we should be wary of just about everything , comments Dr. Monnoye.
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Chills, fever and cough, the most common symptoms
These testimonies are supported by an internal report from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) in the United States, which analyzed the symptoms on 2,591 patients hospitalized between 1er March and 1er may.
Three-quarters of the patients had chills, fever and / or cough, and almost as much difficulty breathing, the most common symptoms of the new coronavirus.
Almost a third complained of body aches, the same for diarrhea; a quarter of the nausea or vomiting. Some 18% had headaches, 10 to 15% had lung or abdominal problems, runny nose, sore throat.
However, until the end of April, the CDC had only listed three symptoms: cough, fever and difficulty breathing. Her website has since been updated, but only added a few: chills, body aches, headaches, loss of smell. French health authorities did the same in early May.
Blood clots, kidney failure
Loss of smell (anosmia) and taste (ageusia) was only detected in 3.5% of patients in the CDC cohort, but experts believe these symptoms are more common in less severe cases .
Anosmia and ageusia rarely occur with other viruses. Much like the development of blood clots, which studies have linked to heart problems, hepatic thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and brain damage in Covid-19 patients.
When a Covid-19 patient is very ill, they may have blood clot problems, which seem much more common than with other viruses, according to Babak Javid, who concludes: Compared to the flu, you are more likely to get very sick and die. “
With Ouest-France
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