(Administrative Supplement) COVID-19 is a viral disease (SARS-CoV-2) that was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The disease has negatively impacted the health of millions of people around the world and is taking a toll on the global economy. The disease has been particularly difficult to contain as it is highly contagious, has a long incubation time (2-14 days) and many carriers of the virus are asymptomatic [1-2]. Initial reports of the disease showed that the symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, fatigue, body aches and shortness of breath [3-4]. However, more recent reports have shown that many COVID-19 patients also lose their ability to smell [5]. Furthermore, reports show that the patients who experience smell loss may otherwise be asymptomatic suggesting that smell loss could potentially be an early indicator of COVID-19 in a subset of the population [5]. These recent findings highlight the importance of studying the relationship between smell loss and COVID-19 to better understand the mechanisms and symptoms of the disorder as well as its potential long term effects. The study proposed here will investigate: 1) the extent to which COVID-19 patients develop smell loss (anosmia); and 2) whether the early presence of anosmia can be used to predict the severity of disease. To invesitgate this urgent question, we will use the well-established 8-item ?Brief? University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (?B-SIT?) [6-9] to assess the olfactory abilities in patients with suspected COVID-19 infection who present to the COVID-19 external testing sites affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.
The findings of the study hold potential high importance for determining whether smell loss in patients with COVID-19 is predictive of eventual disease severity. Such findings would have important clinical implications for prioritizing which patients are most in need of urgent hospitalization and earlier, more aggressive treatment.
