This is an excerpt from Second Opinion, a weekly roundup of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers every Saturday morning. If you hav

Why COVID-19 may now feel like a 'bad cold' — with headache, runny nose among most-reported symptoms

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2021-06-19 23:30:09

This is an excerpt from Second Opinion, a weekly roundup of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers every Saturday morning. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.

The most-reported symptoms of COVID-19 are now a headache, sore throat, and runny nose, according to the research team behind a U.K. symptom tracking app, and medical experts here in Canada say various factors could be causing the illness to feel more like a common cold.

The findings come from the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, which allowed U.K. residents to report their daily symptoms throughout most of the pandemic, with scientific analysis provided by King's College London.

"Since the start of May, we've been looking at the top symptoms for the app users, and they're not the same as they were," said the team's lead researcher, Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, in a video statement released last week.

Headache, sore throat, runny nose and fever are now the top four reported symptoms, all while the more-infectious delta variant, also known as B1617, is sweeping mainly through people under 40 in the U.K.