To understand, the team studied the symptoms of 62,002 vaccinated participants in the UK using the ZOE COVID Study App, who tested positive between June 1, 2021 and November 27, 2021, when Delta was dominant, and from December 22, 2021 to January 17, 2022 when Omicron was dominant.

There was also a lower rate of hospital admission during Omicron than during Delta (1.9 per cent vs 2.6 per cent). It was apparently due to the less involvement of the lower respiratory tract, the researchers said.

This is in line with different studies that showed the Omicron variant of Covid to be mild compared to all previous strains, requiring less need for hospitalisation.

The most striking difference between variants was the difference in loss of sense of smell, a common symptom of earlier variants- appearing in 52.7 per cent of Delta cases, only appearing in under 20 per cent of Omicron cases and often days later.

The two symptoms that were consistently more prevalent among Omicron than Delta cases (regardless of vaccination status) were a sore throat and a hoarse voice.

Moreover, many debilitating symptoms, such as brain fog, eye burning, dizziness, fever, and headaches, though still occurring, were all significantly less prevalent in Omicron cases.

“We observe a different clinical presentation of symptoms in those infected with Omicron compared to Delta. As we are moving even further away from the average patient having UK government acore’ symptoms that is, fever, persistent cough, loss of smell, our results point to a different selection of symptoms that may indicate infection. To protect others, it is still important to self-isolate for five days as soon as you see any symptoms,” Menni said.

Source: IANS