This is an extract from a recent edition of The Journal’s coronavirus newsletter, which cuts through the noise and misinformation to give you clear, accessible facts about the coronavirus, Ireland’s fight to contain it, as well as developments further afield.
This is your one-stop shop for Covid news during a time when it can be hard or overwhelming to try and stay up to date with the latest.
You can read the full edition here, sign up to receive the newsletter here or at the bottom of the page. This version contains additional updates.
COVID NEWS IN Ireland may have felt like white noise for the past few days, so I want to go back to basics in this edition of our coronavirus newsletter.
Forget the vaccine pass criticism, the strange message it sends to young workers, and just the general mess that yesterday’s announcement caused - actually… don’t forget about them, they are all very important issues, but put them out of your mind for a minute – and let’s focus on symptoms.
I’ve been frequently struck in the past year by the myriad of ways in which a Covid infection presents itself – it’s almost like a symptom lucky dip.
It’s a big part of why it is so hard to control; if two people infected with the coronavirus experience radically different symptoms, it can be harder for individuals to judge when to consider self-isolating and seeking a test, and means measures such as temperature tests are not hugely effective.
We’ve learned now to treat any flu-like symptoms (fever, fatigue, aches and pains), a persistent cough (of any type, not necessarily a dry one), shortness of breath, or a loss or changed sense of taste or smell with great suspicion.
But you might not tick all boxes at once. A report in the United Kingdom found that fewer than 40% of people surveyed who had Covid in May experienced a classic cough. In fact, a fever was recorded in fewer than 20% of people.
And these aren’t mild cases: they were confirmed ‘strong positive’ cases, where the person had a high viral load (the symptoms were self-reported but the survey was overseen by the Office of National Statistics, the UK equivalent of our own Central Statistics Office).
You might recall during the third wave when Alpha (the artist formerly known as B.1.1.7 or the UK variant) started spreading that some GPs were reporting people coming forward with more sinusitis-type symptoms than expected.
Delta appears to be further cementing that change. You may have come across this Instagram post from photographer Molly Keane (whose work you can view here) talking about her own experience with this variant.
Some of the symptoms listed aren’t what we might expect from Covid, but instead are things like a runny nose and a headache.
The source for this data is again from the United Kingdom, where the Covid Symptom Study (aka the ZOE study) tracks how exactly people are falling ill with the virus.
Professor Tim Spector, co-founder of the study and an epidemiologist, warned that official advice is in need of an update due to the changing nature of the illness. The study has recorded a change in the top five symptoms for unvaccinated people in recent weeks, coinciding with a rising number of Delta cases:
It is important to note that this is not official HSE advice yet. At the time of writing, its website lists headaches, runny or stuffed nose, and a sore throat as just occasional symptoms.
This presents a big problem during the summer as enter into hay fever season. I have mine well-controlled (seriously, I will frolic in any meadow presented to me with wild abandon thanks to a combination of cetirizine and fluticasone propionate, both available without a prescription but speak to your doctor first for proper advice on this) but would be forgiven for shrugging off a runny nose as the result of a high pollen count.
It’s important to stress that this could be a factor here – if my hay fever wasn’t well controlled, and I caught Covid (I’ve managed to avoid it so far, touch wood), I’d almost certainly experience a runny nose but not necessarily one related to Covid – but it’s no longer a reason to ignore it.
Gastro symptoms like diarrhoea or nausea and vomiting are listed as “rare” – this matches the results of the ONS study, in which the number reporting these symptoms fell to around 5% of cases in May, but that would still account for one in 20 cases.
The UK study found that people who are partially or fully vaccinated (yes, you can still get a mild to awful dose of Covid) can also expect to experience sneezing.
Beside sneezing on the HSE website is written an almost comically flat ‘no’. Just no. Don’t even consider sneezing. No!
That can be forgiven, as it is a very rare (perhaps emerging) symptom, and sneezing alone cannot be taken as a sign of Covid infection.
The ZOE study also lists even more symptoms than the HSE, such as:
I have asked the HSE if they are considering updating symptoms, but at the time of writing haven’t heard back and will share their response when I receive it – just to stress again, this is emerging evidence, and you’ll find the latest official public health advice here.
However, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan was asked on RTÉ’s Six One this week about the symptoms of Delta and whether they are different Alpha:
“Yes, and a range of, let’s say, milder symptoms have been reported in association with some of the cases.
But the really important thing for any individual is if you experience symptoms that are cold-like symptoms or other symptoms that, at this stage, people are well familiar with – if they have a new-onset breathlessness, a temperature, a new-onset cough, or if they have difficulty in smelling or tasting, or any other symptoms that are associated with cold, they can speak to their GP or come forward for a test directly themselves through the testing centers the agency has in place.
“We have very significant capacity for testing, we want people to come forward for testing.”
If you’re displaying any of these symptoms, call your GP, book a test online, or go to a walk-in centre.
The myriad of symptoms and their changing nature makes the situation difficult to parse. This presents an even greater difficulty when combined with the fact that Delta is far more transmissible than the variant we’ve experienced previously.
Subscribers to this newsletter are well aware of that at this stage, but it is worth repeating, as there is growing anecdotal evidence of outdoor transmission.
The assumption was that for every one case of wild type coronavirus (the technical term for original strain from Wuhan), somewhere between two and three more people (2.4 to 2.6, to be exact) would be infected (we are able to keep our R-number lower than that thanks to social and physical distancing, and now vaccines).
For Alpha, the number is between four and five.
For Delta, it’s between five and eight, presenting much more opportunity for exponential growth if it lands at the upper end of that scale.
I’ll end today’s newsletter with the latest data: The Delta variant is now believed to account for more than 55% of cases in Ireland, and is expected to be dominant come mid-July.
This is an extract from a recent edition of The Journal’s coronavirus newsletter, which cuts through the noise and misinformation to give you clear, accessible facts about the coronavirus, Ireland’s fight to contain it, as well as developments further afield.
This is your one-stop shop for Covid news during a time when it can be hard or overwhelming to try and stay up to date with the latest.
You can read the full edition here, sign up to receive the newsletter here or at the bottom of the page. This version contains additional updates.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say