This is the order coronavirus symptoms appear, docs say - from nausea to cough and fever

SCIENTISTS have found the likely order in which Covid-19 symptoms first appear. 

According to researchers at the University of South California, the symptoms of Covid-19 appear in the following order - fever, cough, muscle pain, and then nausea, and/or vomiting, and diarrhoea.

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Knowing how the symptoms first appear may help doctors rule out other illnesses according to the study led by doctoral candidate Joseph Larsen and his colleagues at the USC Michelson Center.

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The order of the symptoms were predicted from more than 55,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in China which were collected from February 16 to February 24 by the World Health Organisation.

The authors of the study also used a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases collected from December 11, 2019, through January 29, 2020, by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group.

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Recognising the order of symptoms also could help doctors plan how to treat patients, and perhaps intervene earlier in the disease.

"This order is especially important to know when we have overlapping cycles of illnesses like the flu that coincide with infections of COVID-19," said Dr Kuhn, a USC professor of medicine, biomedical engineering, and aerospace and mechanical engineering. 

"Doctors can determine what steps to take to care for the patient, and they may prevent the patient's condition from worsening."

"Given that there are now better approaches to treatments for COVID-19, identifying patients earlier could reduce hospitalization time," said Larsen, the study's lead author.

Fever and cough are frequently associated with a variety of respiratory illnesses, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). 

But the timing and symptoms in the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract set COVID-19 apart.

"The upper GI tract (i.e., nausea/vomiting) seems to be affected before the lower GI tract (i.e., diarrhoea) in COVID-19, which is the opposite from MERS and SARS," the scientists wrote.

To compare the order of COVID-19 symptoms to influenza, the researchers examined data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere, which were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.

"The order of the symptoms matter,"Larsen, the lead author, said.

“Knowing that each illness progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner whether someone likely has COVID-19, or another illness, which can help them make better treatment decisions."

However, these symptoms are the short-term afflictions that patients suffer with.

Some patients who test positive for the virus can suffer from agonising symptoms for months, scientists warn.

Some people - known as "long haulers" - have reported battling with the lingering problems despite overcoming Covid-19.

The most common symptom is crippling fatigue, but others have experienced aching muscles and difficulty concentrating.

The World Health Organisation said that for severe or critical patients, the recovery period could last up to six weeks.

But scientists are starting to acknowledge that for some people, their symptoms aren't sticking to those timescales.