A set of seven symptoms, considered together, can be used to maximise detection of COVID-19, according to a new paper published this week in PLOS Medicine by Marc Chadeau-Hyam and Paul Elliott of Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues.
In order to ensure efficient control of transmission, a rapid detection of a Covid infection is key.
The discovery hopes to help with testing capacity by using a more informative system for test allocation using the main symptoms as indicators.
In the new study, researchers obtained throat and nose swabs with valid SARS-CoV-2 PCR test results from 1,147,345 volunteers in England.