In the early days of the pandemic, one seemingly less severe, but nevertheless troubling symptom kept making headlines: anosmia, or total loss of sense of smell. However, this was somewhat of a misnomer of the symptom many COVID-19 patients were experiencing. According to several studies, the smell loss reported in conjunction with COVID-19 was more often hyposmia, or partial loss.
Many people who had purportedly mild cases of COVID often noted some level of smell loss as their only symptom. While having your food taste like cardboard for a few weeks may not sound so bad, a notable percentage of COVID patients have yet to fully recover their sense of smell, and it’s impacting their daily lives in significant ways.
”We see quite a few people with COVID with long lasting smell loss six to eight months out, and we don't know what proportion of the population will have permanent smell loss,” says Dr. Richard Doty, Director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
