A strange omicron variant symptom has emerged as COVID-19 has continued to spread across the country.
Dr. John Torres, NBC News senior medical correspondent, told the “Today” show that one of the most common COVID-19 symptoms — loss of taste and smell — has not been common among omicron variant patients.
- However, “people are reporting night sweats, which is a very strange symptom that they say they’re having,” Torres told the “Today” show.
Night sweats have become one of the common omicron variant symptoms, along with muscle aches, fatigue and scratchy throats, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
Torres said you should assume you have COVID-19 if you start to feel sick, regardless of the symptoms you’re feeling.
- “So if you start getting sick, essentially you have to assume it’s COVID unless proven otherwise,” he said. “And by that I mean make sure you isolate yourself (and) get a test to make sure it’s not COVID.”
- “You notice there’s a lot of overlap in those symptoms, and that’s why it can be so hard to tell the difference between all of them,” Torres said. “But there are a few differences.”
Dr. Amir Khan, a physician with the U.K.’s National Health Service, told the U.K. newspaper The Sun that night sweats had become a COVID-19 symptom for the omicron variant, too.
- Khan said the night sweats are “those kind of drenching night sweats where you might have to get up and change your clothes.”
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who sounded the alarm on the omicron coronavirus variant, said at the beginning of the omicron variant wave that the symptoms are re often “very, very mild” compared to previous COVID-19 strains, per Al Jazeera.