Health Ministry adds two new symptoms of COVID-19; says observed before respiratory issues

In a major update on Saturday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has added two new symptoms of COVID-19 to the list of those identified earlier. These include Anosmia - Loss of Smell, and Ageusia - Loss of taste. The Health Ministry added that these symptoms have been reported preceding the onset of respiratory symptoms in several cases. 

Other symptoms of the COVID-19 include:

• Fever
• Cough 
• Fatigue 
• Shortness of breath 
• Expectoration 
• Myalgia 
• Rhinorrhea, sore throat, diarrhoea

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India's total COVID-19 cases on Saturday at 3,08,993 of which 1,45,779 are active while 1,54,330 have recovered. 8,884 people have died thus far. India has surpassed UK's COVID tally and now stands as the fourth-most affected country across the globe. However, the Health Ministry has denounced such comparisons, stating that the parameters are different. Many times we compare the absolute numbers (of COVID-19 cases) with other countries and say that the number there is high or low. I would like to point out that sometimes this becomes misleading and misconstrued. When we compare, we should compare with countries having a population equivalent of ours. We cannot compare with countries having less population than ours," Lav Aggarwal said on Thursday.

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No community transmission: ICMR 

Reiterating that India was still not experiencing 'community transmission', ICMR chief Dr. Balram Bhargava, on Thursday, stated that in comparison to the population of India, the effect of the virus was very low, at the Centre's press briefing on Coronavirus (COVID-19) scenario. When asked if efforts were made to ramp up testing, he said, "We had one lab in February and now we have over 850 labs in the country today. A total of 52,13,140 samples have been tested as of date with 1,51,808 samples tested in the past 24 hours. We do have the capacity to test upto 2 lakh cases and will ramp up testing accordingly".

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