If it seems to you like pretty much everyone in the UK has Covid at the moment, well, you’re not wrong. Covid infection rates are at record levels, with 4.9 million people currently testing positive for the virus – which is around one in every 13 people.
As a response to such high infection rates, the website of the UK Health Security Agency has updated its list of official Covid symptoms. The idea behind this is to better inform people about whether they might have the virus, thereby encouraging them to self-isolate and slow its spread.
The original key symptoms were a fever, a new continuous cough and a loss of taste or smell. But now there are nine further symptoms, which are:
– Shortness of breath
– Unexplained tiredness
– Aching muscles
– Loss of appetite
– Headache
– Blocked or runny nose
– Sore throat
– Diarrhoea
– Feeling sick or being sick
We know what you’re thinking. Haven’t we already known about lots of these extra symptoms for a rather long time? Indeed we have. While other organisations like the WHO and the CDC have included a longer list of symptoms for quite a while, the UK is only just catching up.
In related news, free testing ended in England last week (find out where to get cheap lateral flow tests here). So if you do think you’ve got Covid, you’ll either have to splash the cash or, erm, make an informed guess yourself. Some might say that ending free testing during a peak of infections might not’ve been the most sensible policy, eh?
You can view the UK Health Security Agency’s full list of official symptoms here.
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