Since the start of the pandemic we have known that the main symptoms to watch out for include fever, persistent cough, or loss of taste and smell, but others show up over time. Like the "purple toe" one, for example.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread, having already infected more than 48 million people worldwide and killed more than 1.2 million of them. In France, where the dreaded second wave is increasingly clogging hospitals, the toll officially stands at more than 48,000 deaths , according to the count of Johns Hopkins University (USA).
As for symptoms, we know that the disease can affect individuals differently. Serious symptoms include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, loss of speech or motor skills. The most common are fever, dry cough and fatigue. Others, less common, include body aches, diarrhea, headaches, conjunctivitis, sore throat, loss of taste and smell, or skin rashes.
That said, they're not the only ones. As the patients follow one another, other symptoms may indeed also be revealed in hindsight. That of "purple toes", in particular.
According to work conducted jointly by the International League of Dermatological Societies and the American Academy of Dermatology, "there appears to be a certain subgroup of patients who, when contracting Covid-19, develop inflammation in their toes, which makes them red and swollen, then they eventually turn purple “, details Esther Freeman, dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study.
Between April and August 2020, just over a thousand dermatological manifestations inherent to Covid-19 were recorded in 39 countries around the world. On this sample, nearly 60% presented this famous symptom of bluish toes .
Note that he is not the only one. Recently published work by the Indiana University of Medicine reveals that of the 1,567 people responding to the study, 423 said they had noticed hair loss, which is about 27% of the subjects . This symptom had been highlighted a few days earlier by American actress Alyssa Milano on Instagram.
Finally, two last Covid-related symptoms have recently been mentioned, but only in single cases. In BMJ Case Reports , on the one hand, researchers detailed the case of a man suffering not from loss of taste and smell, but from "sudden and permanent hearing loss “.
The medical journal The American Journal of Emergency Medicine , researchers report the case of a 62-year-old man who suffered from persistent hiccups for four days. The sexagenarian then developed a severe form of the disease.
