Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day thirty five
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story
Speaker 1: today and under examined symptom of COVID nineteen could give
Speaker 1: scientists clues about how to contain the virus. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened today. The new coronavirus has now infected
Speaker 1: two million people around the world. Hitting that number is
Speaker 1: a grim milestone. It exposes how hard the world has
Speaker 1: struggled to contain the deadly pathogen. It took about four
Speaker 1: months for the virus to infect one million people and
Speaker 1: only twelve days for that number to double. The total
Speaker 1: case count today is likely higher than two millions, with
Speaker 1: some countries, including the US, testing only a fraction of
Speaker 1: their populations. The European Commission is devising a plan to
Speaker 1: get Europe's economy back up and running. The Commission says
Speaker 1: companies and workers won't get back to business as usual
Speaker 1: until there's a vaccine or a cure for COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the European Union's Executive arm has created
Speaker 1: a roadmap for partially lifting restrictions in an effort to
Speaker 1: mitigate the economic devastation. The plan, unveiled by Commission President
Speaker 1: Ursula Vonderland on Wednesday, would coordinate a gradual exit from
Speaker 1: the lockdowns that the blocks twenty seven member states imposed
Speaker 1: last month. The Commission has warned that the easing may
Speaker 1: be temporary, as it will unavoidably lead to a spike
Speaker 1: in new cases that could threaten healthcare systems again end
Speaker 1: and lead to a reinstatement of the confinement rules. And
Speaker 1: China criticized US President Donald Trump's decision to halt funding
Speaker 1: to the World Health Organization and said they would support
Speaker 1: the global health body. Trump ordered the move against the
Speaker 1: WHO on Tuesday, saying the organization took China's claims about
Speaker 1: the coronavirus at face value. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jolly
Speaker 1: g n said Wednesday that the decision will quote weaken
Speaker 1: the who's capabilities and undermine international cooperation end quote. And
Speaker 1: now for today's main story, the loss of the ability
Speaker 1: to smell is one of the strangest clues that someone
Speaker 1: may have COVID nineteen. Experts around the world are still
Speaker 1: trying to understand why this symptom pops up and what
Speaker 1: it means for patients. Some are calling on people who
Speaker 1: have lost their sense of smell to get tested and
Speaker 1: isolate themselves, even if they have no other symptoms, to
Speaker 1: slow the spread of the virus. Bloomberg Senior editor Jason
Speaker 1: Gale helps untangle the mystery of how COVID nineteen might
Speaker 1: affect smell and why we might want to pay more
Speaker 1: attention to this obscure symptom. Thanks to COVID nineteen, we've
Speaker 1: learned a bunch of new words these past months. A
Speaker 1: nasmia and discusia are a couple of them. A nasmia
Speaker 1: is the medical term for the loss of smell. If
Speaker 1: you have discusia, it means your ability to taste things
Speaker 1: is off. It turns out both can be signs and
Speaker 1: sometimes the first sign of COVID nineteen. What I hadn't
Speaker 1: yet realized is I'd completely lost my sense of small
Speaker 1: add taste. This is Dan Mace, a thirty year old
Speaker 1: vlogger from Cape Town, South Africa, who told his seven
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand UT subscribers about his experience of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: He got diagnosed on March twenty one. He felt pretty
Speaker 1: lousy for a while, but wasn't hospitalized. In fact, a
Speaker 1: couple of doctors who reviewed him didn't think he had
Speaker 1: the coronavirus, but still some of his symptoms persisted, because
Speaker 1: when I made myself breakfast that I realized I had
Speaker 1: absolutely no taste and no smile, and that I hadn't
Speaker 1: had these two senses since the day that I became ill.
Speaker 1: Dan Mace isn't alone. His symptoms have been experienced by
Speaker 1: patients all over the world, and eos and throat surgeons
Speaker 1: have likewise been noting such cases and alerting their colleagues
Speaker 1: to them. I spoke recently with Dr Jim Denaney, who's
Speaker 1: been working in the field for forty two years and
Speaker 1: is on the faculty at Johns Hopkins and the University
Speaker 1: of Missouri. He's also the executive vice president and CEO
Speaker 1: of the American Academy of odo Laryngology. Had a neck surgery.
Speaker 1: Jim told me the loss of smell isn't uncommon when
Speaker 1: someone has a cold. COVID nine tame patients seem to
Speaker 1: be getting it more. I would say that a higher
Speaker 1: percentage of people seem to be getting it. There's still
Speaker 1: a good recovery rate, but there's a higher percentage of
Speaker 1: people than you'd expect from a common cold are getting
Speaker 1: some real anosmia or hyposmia. Partial smell and the accompanying
Speaker 1: this goosey. It means your taste is a little off,
Speaker 1: and you can make that happen yourself just by pinching
Speaker 1: your nose when you're eating. So there's a normal relation
Speaker 1: between those two. Doctor saw a similar phenomenon with size
Speaker 1: or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a related coronavirus I think
Speaker 1: caused an outbreak in two thousand and three. This seems
Speaker 1: to be a little more prevalent than that one was,
Speaker 1: at least from what I've read. But I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone has access to the total number of cases because
Speaker 1: many providers don't ask that question, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are are so worried they don't come out and
Speaker 1: say and by the way, I can't smell or taste.
Speaker 1: They're worried whether they're going to survive or not. Jim's
Speaker 1: Academy started an online and knows me, a reporting tool
Speaker 1: for doctors to share information about the condition. In much
Speaker 1: it's gathering important insights into patients with COVID nineteen who
Speaker 1: are experiencing a complete or partial loss of their senses
Speaker 1: of smell and taste. I think the most interesting piece
Speaker 1: in this first hundred and fifty there was over thirty
Speaker 1: percent that it was the only symptom they had before
Speaker 1: the diagnosis. It was the first symptom. Jim thinks it
Speaker 1: makes sense for health workers to queery patients about sensory
Speaker 1: changes when they decide if someone should be tested for
Speaker 1: the coronavirus. In my mind, it's a what have you
Speaker 1: got to lose? Situation? If you ask the question and
Speaker 1: they don't have it, you have lost nothing. Because it's
Speaker 1: not an additional test. It doesn't put anyone at more risk,
Speaker 1: but it may actually get someone into self isolation earlier,
Speaker 1: or be tested earlier than or is already happening. If
Speaker 1: you have these symptoms, how long will they last? We
Speaker 1: don't know. Some of these cases aren't that far, but
Speaker 1: the ones who are a lot of these don't last
Speaker 1: more than five to seven days was the average time
Speaker 1: in our in our studies, So most people will get
Speaker 1: most people get it back the majority, and most of
Speaker 1: it comes within the first week to ten days. I
Speaker 1: guess as the takeaway point, the loss of smell might
Speaker 1: sound like a quickie symptom of COVID nineteen, but its
Speaker 1: effects can be profound, especially for those people whose sense
Speaker 1: of smell is lost forever. Dr Bob Data is an
Speaker 1: associate professor of neurobiology at Havard Medical School in Boston.
Speaker 1: His laboratory studies the function of neural circuits and how
Speaker 1: they drive behavior. Hey is particularly interested in the sense
Speaker 1: of smell, how animals detect smells, and how that changes
Speaker 1: brain activity. I very much think the hope is that
Speaker 1: only a small fraction of these people will permanently lose
Speaker 1: their sense of smell, Bob says. When that happens, the
Speaker 1: permanent loss of the ability to smell is far from trivial,
Speaker 1: and it's important to remember that from a medical perspective.
Speaker 1: You know, as humans were used to thinking of smell
Speaker 1: as being kind of a bonus sense um, and it's
Speaker 1: really critical to know that that's that's not what smell is.
Speaker 1: So smells essential for detecting dangerous odors, smoke from fires,
Speaker 1: spoiled food, natural gas, but and so we think of
Speaker 1: smelling that way, But it smells also incredibly important for
Speaker 1: our well being. People who have nuance that permanent osmia
Speaker 1: often describe themselves as being depressed, and they're really at
Speaker 1: risk of developing depression because we're so dependent on our
Speaker 1: sense of smell for our kind of sense of well
Speaker 1: being and situating ourselves emotionally in the world. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's a community where we're really taking it
Speaker 1: seriously because we're hoping that I can understand this process
Speaker 1: and maybe in the future. Interview, Bob says, basic scientific
Speaker 1: understanding about the new coronavirus is just emerging, which is
Speaker 1: why lamps are like his of only hypotheses around why
Speaker 1: infections may cause and nose meet and so that really
Speaker 1: strongly suggests that what's not happening is that the virus
Speaker 1: is directly affecting the cells in your nose that are
Speaker 1: responsible for smell. Okay, so what else could possibly be
Speaker 1: going on? They've looked at other possibilities. The virus could
Speaker 1: be affecting cells that surround key neurons in the nose,
Speaker 1: stopping them from sending electrical signals to the brain. Or
Speaker 1: it could be damaging a layer of stem cells under
Speaker 1: the neurons, which then need to recover. You know, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with a very unusual situation. In which you know,
Speaker 1: the science is coming out as fast as we can
Speaker 1: generate it. What are the amazing things about the way
Speaker 1: that science firs today Is that we can communicate a
Speaker 1: result of very quickly, and that means that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of preliminary results flooting around, But it also
Speaker 1: means that it's gonna take some time for us to
Speaker 1: organize an information. It really makes sense of it. The
Speaker 1: mystery of why many COVID nineteen patients lose their sense
Speaker 1: of smell and taste hasn't been solved yet, but finding
Speaker 1: the answer may lead to ways of treating the condition
Speaker 1: and hopefully shorten the time it takes to resolve. Perhaps
Speaker 1: more important, if doctors begin to systematically screen for this symptom,
Speaker 1: not just the more common ones like coffin fever, they
Speaker 1: could test and isolate people with the coronavirus sooner. That
Speaker 1: could eventually make a big difference in containing the disease.
Speaker 1: That was Jason Gale in Melbourne. And that's it for
Speaker 1: the Prognosis Daily edition. For more on the pandemic from
Speaker 1: our bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 1: coronavirus and one small favor if you like what we're doing,
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Speaker 1: more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition
Speaker 1: is hosted by Me. The show was produced by Me
Speaker 1: Topher foreheads, Jordan Gaspoure and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story
Speaker 1: was reported by Jason Gale. Original music by Leo Citrian.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Francesca Levy and Rick Shine. Francesca Leviy
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.