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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

I know this is not research, but two friends of mine that are reporting symptoms of covid19 and report anosmia are also reporting ageusia (loss of taste), not sure if this has been or will be confirmed by research though. It's been around 4 days since they started complaining about this already.

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From what I understand, the sense of taste is intertwined with the sense of smell.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-connection-between-taste-a...

It definitely is. I know a relative who lost their sense of smell and they also report being unable to taste anything other than plain salt, sweet, pepper-heat, sour, and bitter. They have lost the ability to taste spices, recognize different types of sour, etc.

I had an infection that's not unlikely to have been Covid-19 last week, and lost both taste and smell for ~5-6 days (otherwise relatively mild symptoms, strong cough and fever for a few days, but no severe impact on breathing).

The loss was so complete that I couldn't smell household garbage, taste strong blue cheese or get anything from extremely spicy chilis except for the physical sensation - it was quite eery and very unlike the reduced senses you'd get with the common cold.

I had the same thing like a week ago. I couldn’t even smell an orange, directly under my nose, or my 1 year old’s poopy diaper. Never happened before in my life. I actually googled what could cause it at the time. Lasted for 3-4 days.

Other symptoms included an intermittent headache and nausea. Nothing else except for coughing very rarely and a fever that never topped 100.

> not sure if this has been or will be confirmed by research though

Definitely not research but I've read several comments on /r/italy that were mentioning just that, i.e. loss of smell combined with loss of taste for some of the commenters in there or their friends/acquaintances (who also had other covid-related symptoms). I've first read this 3 or 4 or days ago, so it was not written as responses to articles like these (which have started showing up in the last two or so days).

> loss of smell combined with loss of taste

It could be related to the fact that Spring is starting in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus, the body reacts to the increased amount of polen in the air.

I'm allergic, so it's normal for me to suffer those symptoms every Spring.

Yea, why are you just guessing random stuff? You can't smell when you are having allergies because your sinuses are full of snot and your nose is clogged, not because your smell receptors stop working.

The German researchers who first described these symptoms grouped loss of smell together with loss of taste. They saw this in 2/3 of their cases.

When they report ageusia, do they specifically mean sweet/salty/bitter/etc?

I had COVID-19 and lost almost all smell senses (no symptoms of a stuffy nose or mucus). I could still taste sweet, salty, bitter, sour, umami. But I could not tell you where those tastes came from. It was difficult to cook in that time, and food was very bland and meaningless. Lasted for about a week.

I could smell laundry detergent very faintly so I know I had not completely lost the sense. I also felt a pain in the back of my nose/top of head as if I had water go up it, so I assume something was irritating that part of my nose. A dry cough has started to take place only after the fever stopped and I noticed my breathing is a bit harder than before the virus took over.

an Italian doctor infected with the virus reported and warned for those symptoms.

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