Covid symptoms have changed and disease has become milder, say Kolkata doctors

Covid symptoms have changed considerably since the second wave of infections making it tougher to detect new cases, doctors in Kolkata say.

Neighbourhood general practitioners in the city realised some time last month that the virus had altered symptoms, TOI reported, when they found multiple members of the same family suffering from cough and cold.

“Since cough and cold are common during season change, initially we thought it was the common flu. But when we found more family members developing similar symptoms, we began to suspect there could be more to it. Also, while a majority of the patients recovered following treatment, for some the symptoms lingered and they began experiencing loss of taste and smell. This typically happened around the eighth or ninth day since the onset of the flu,” said Sabyasachi Bardhan, who practices in the Ballygunge-Lansdowne belt.


His wife Shilpi Bardhan, who also practices in the area, said some of those who got an RT-PCR test done were found to be Covid positive.

Since a significant number of patients are fully vaccinated and there were no severity of symptoms, many of the cases could be going unrecorded. Most of the doctors were not even advising tests, and even if they did, there was little compliance.

Debabrata Saha, who practices in the Kankurgachi-Shyambazar belt listed out the changed symptoms observed: wet cough instead of the earlier dry cough, and low-grade fever instead of the medium- and high-grade temperature earlier.

Another doctor, Ranjit Das from Bhowanipore, said he and several other GPs are advising senior citizens and those susceptible to chest infection to now take flu shots.

“We don’t know when the booster dose will happen. Many have taken their second dose six months ago. They should be taking the flu vaccine now,” he told TOI.\