The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning that a specific COVID-19 symptom can last for months.
What’s going on?
The CDC has a specific page on its website for those who had or think they had COVID-19. The page details when people can be around others without fear of spreading the virus.
- People can visit others after they’ve been through 10 days since symptoms first appeared and 24 hours with no fever (specifically without using a fever-reducing medication, according to the CDC. You’ll also want to make sure other symptoms are improving.
- However, the CDC also says the “loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation.”
- These recommendations don’t apply to those with severe COVID-19 or with weakened immune systems.
More on long-haulers
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been COVID-19 patients who suffer from symptoms for weeks and months after their diagnosis. These patients are often referred to as “long-haulers.” Taste and smell have been one of the long-haul symptoms.
Long-haul symptoms include exhaustion, shortness of breath, headaches, fast heart beats, changes in taste and smell and brain fog, among other symptoms, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
Recently, thousands of Utah residents dealing with COVID-19 symptoms months after diagnosis celebrated their recognition after the state’s coronavirus website added a recent article about them.
- “We are real people dealing with this, with families and jobs that some of us haven’t been able to return to,” said Lisa O’Brien, creator of the Utah COVID-19 Long Haulers Facebook group, according to KSL.com.