Omicron symptoms: New self-reported data reveals the top five signs of infection

22/03/2022

China sees more Covid cases in three months than entire 2021

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The new wave of Omicron – the BA.2 variant – is becoming dominant in many parts of the world. In the UK, cases are again on the rise. The variant is thought to be up to 60 percent more transmissible than the original Covid strain and 25 percent more contagious than the first Omicron variant. With infection cases rising again, what are the most common symptoms being seen?

The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron – believed to be as mild but more contagious than the original strain – is now the dominant variant worldwide.

But official data released by authorities in the UK this month showed Omicron had led to only 35 deaths per 100,000 infections, compared to 40 fatalities for the flu.

Data has revealed the five most common symptoms which are all similar to the common cold.

Data self-reported to the UK’s Covid app on Monday found the top five symptoms of the virus which include:

Runny nose with 80.75 percent prevalence
Headache 68.6 percent
Fatigue 68.56 percent
Sore throat 68.21 percent
Sneezing 66.94 percent.

Other symptoms which may indicate an infection include:

Persistent cough 51.16 percent

Hoarse voice 45.39 percent

Chills or shivers 35.75 percent

Unusual joint pains 32.26 percent

Fever 31.08 percent

Dizziness 29.24 percent

Brain fog 26.68 percent

Eye soreness 24.43 percent

Altered smell 23.02 percent

Lower back pain 22.58 percent

Unusual muscle pain 22.3 percent

Swollen glands 20. 45 percent.

Researchers have found that both BA.1 and BA.2 variants can infect people who were protected from earlier viral strains by vaccines and/or previous infection because their spike proteins are drastically different to any previous Covid strain.

This means that in terms of protection against infection, even populations with high rates of vaccination or prior infection were essentially encountering it as an almost novel virus.

The second reason behind the explosive growth of Omicron is that its incubation time is much shorter than for any previous Covid lineage. BA.2 has an even shorter incubation time than BA.1.

Shorter incubation can lead to explosive growth in daily case numbers over a short period of time even if each infected person passes on the virus to a similar number of other hosts.

The main Covid strains still designated “variants of concern” are:

Alpha: Earliest sample documented sample from the UK in September 2020
Beta: South Africa, May 2020
Gamma: Brazil, November 2020
Delta: India, October 2020
Omicron: Several countries November 2021.

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