The omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is still spreading around the country, and we’re still doing our best to keep up with the rising omicron variant symptoms that have emerged from infection. But there are still so many unknowns about what the omicron variant can do.
What’s happening: Readers of MPR News recently asked Dr. Melanie Swift, co-chairwoman of Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation and Distribution Work Group, about the omicron variant, the COVID-19 vaccine and more related topics in a simple question-and-answer session.
Symptom talk: One reader asked her if too much mucus — especially in the throat area — is a sign of COVID-19.
- “No, I haven’t really seen that. Symptoms of COVID are fever, cough, sore throat — some people do have congestion with it,” she said, according to MPR News. “But not an overproduction of mucus, no.”
The bigger picture: Indeed, multiple reports have suggested that the most common omicron variant symptoms aren’t often the “classic three” COVID-19 symptoms.
- Cough, fever, and loss or change to taste and smell are often considered the most common COVID-19 symptoms.
- But with omicron, symptoms such as headaches, night sweats, vomiting and loss of appetite have all made headlines for becoming new symptoms, as I reported for the Deseret News.
- “Quite a few of them had nausea, slight temperature, sore throats and headaches,” Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, recently told The Daily Express in the U.K.