[*] Typically, swelling and excessive mucus build-up in the sinuses blocks the nerve endings deep within the nose that are responsible for sensing smells. Because the sense of smell and taste are so closely related, sufferers often report a loss of taste.
The best place to start is focusing on reducing the inflammation in your nasal passages. If you can open up your sinuses and facilitate drainage, your smell (and therefore your taste) will return faster. Saline irrigations are helpful to wash out signs of infection and clear inflammation.
We know that the sense of smell helps in getting the complete taste of food. In case of common cold, our nose is blocked, which blocks the sense of smell. That is why we are unable to taste food properly in case of cold.
If there's a blockage of this channel, like when you have a stuffy nose due to the flu or a cold, odors can't get to the sensory cells the smells stimulate. This results in you losing a lot of your ability to taste the flavor of food. In this manner, your senses of taste and smell work closely together.
COVID-19 and sinus infections can have similar symptoms, such as a sore throat, headache, and cough. While both illnesses are contagious, COVID-19 is more likely to spread than a sinus infection — and it can also be more dangerous.
Green and cloudy: viral or bacterial infection
A lot of the symptoms of viral infections – fever, cough, headache, loss of smell – overlap for COVID-19 and other viral infections like the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and the common cold.
People with moderate or severe COVID-19 should isolate through at least day 10. Those with severe COVID-19 may remain infectious beyond 10 days and may need to extend isolation for up to 20 days.
Try sharp tasting foods and drinks, such as citrus fruits, juices, sorbet, jelly, lemon mousse, fruit yoghurt, boiled sweets, mints, lemonade, Marmite, Bovril, or aniseed.
Anything that irritates and inflames the inner lining of your nose and makes it feel stuffy, runny, itchy, or drippy can affect your senses of smell and taste. This includes the common cold, sinus infections, allergies, sneezing, congestion, the flu, and COVID-19.
Nasal congestion typically clears after a few days, but congestion that lasts for a week or more may be a sign of an infection. Left untreated, nasal congestion may cause sinusitis, nasal polyps or middle ear infections.
Vicks VapoRub — a topical ointment made of ingredients including camphor, eucalyptus oil and menthol that you rub on your throat and chest — doesn't relieve nasal congestion. But the strong menthol odor of VapoRub may trick your brain, so you feel like you're breathing through an unclogged nose.
A stuffy nose will usually go away in about a week. But if it doesn't, or you get congested at certain times of year or when you're around pets or smokers, your doctor can help you find out if you have allergies and get you the right treatment to make any allergies less of an annoyance.
People have experienced a wide variety of symptoms from COVID-19. Some feel like they have a mild cold, while others feel exhausted. Some develop a lingering cough, while others lose their sense of smell and taste.
Some people experience a change to their taste and smell following COVID-19 infection, also known as parosmia (abnormal sense of smell), hyposmia (decreased sense of smell), and anosmia (loss of sense of smell). The good news is it's usually only temporary—in most cases.
When a virus attacks these neurons, it can trigger a sudden, complete loss of smell, a condition referred to anosmia. This sudden smell loss usually happens after you experience a severe cold, once your other cold symptoms have cleared up.
Some people with COVID-19 also lose chemesthesis, the ability to sense chemicals in chili peppers, herbs and spices such as capsaicin in a jalapeno or menthol in mint.
Can COVID-19 cause permanent loss of smell and taste? It's unlikely, since COVID-19 doesn't appear to damage olfactory nerves or taste buds directly – it only affects the cells that support your olfactory nerves.
If your nose is stuffed or blocked by a cold or the flu, the odors can't reach the sensory cells in your nose, and you lose much of the enjoyment of flavor. Foods taste bland and lose nuance.
After a positive test result, you may continue to test positive for some time. Some tests, especially PCR tests, may continue to show a positive result for up to 90 days.
Negative test result
There's still a chance you could have the virus, so you should follow the advice on how to avoid catching and spreading COVID-19. If you're eligible for COVID-19 treatments and you get a negative result, you must report your result as you may need to do another test.