COVID Tongue: Here’s All You Need To Know About The Latest Coronavirus Symptom

New Delhi: Fever, fatigue and dry cough may be the most prominent symptoms of COVID-19, but now a rare and strange symptom has been established amongst some patients, which causes infection inside the mouth. ‘COVID tongue’ is a ‘possible’ symptom of the disease, a latest UK study has found.

The study’s author and British researcher, Tim Spector OBE, who is helping to track the warning signs, says some patients have reported developing painful mouth ulcers or rashes on their tongues. Mr Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and the lead investigator of the ZOE COVID Symptom Study, has dubbed it as “COVID tongue”.

Plenty of evidence from ZOE app users that Covid tongue was around from December 2019 so unlikely to be related to new strain – it just wasnt considered a symptom in the early days when we were told it was "bad flu" https://t.co/fG8QroJkON

— Tim Spector (@timspector) January 27, 2021

COVID tongue could be one of a whole host of “non-classic symptoms” that tend to get overlooked, including skin rashes, and changes to the palms of the hands or soles of the feet. More and more COVID cases are being reported wherein the patients are complaining of tongue discolouration, enlargement and other such mouth problems like ulcers.

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NDTV reached out to Dr Rajay Naraian, Director, Global Health Alliance, UK, to get his insight on thIS latest emerging symptom. Talking about the same, he explained,

As we know, there was a study conducted by Kings College London by Professor Tim Spector. He carried on the study on 500 infected patients and found that almost 1-2 patients out of every 500 got some strange symptoms in their mouths with may include swelling in the tongue, strange patches on the tongues, ulcers. However, clinically speaking, we have seen thousands of cases of coronavirus across UK, few of these – especially those who are admitted for a long time in ICUs – we have seen those who are immunocompromised, or get additional viral infection, are likely to get ulcers or small patches in their mouth.

But it is also important, Dr Narain said, that we do not get too alarmed about it, as it is a very early sign in a very latest research.

Not every ulcer or patch in the mouth is COVID, just like not every cough or fever isn’t. However, if you do get small ulcers or small patch, it is important to get tested for COVID, he added.

When It comes to the possibility of this particular symptom being associated with the new variant of coronavirus, Dr Narain says that there is no such indication as of now.

There is no such sign or indication as far as the new variant is concerned. It has not been linked to any of those variants yet, but yes we are seeing some more number of such cases which we had not seen in the first six months of the pandemic.

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Despite it being rare, COVID Tongue as a symptom has not really been highlighted in India’s 1 crore plus cases. Dr Hitesh Jain, a senior physician at Max Hospital, tells NDTV,

As far as the newly discovered symptom goes, we have not observed such cases in the country yet. Maybe some patients got it and didn’t realise that it was due to COVID, but now onwards we will be informing them about this possibility.

India has observed a sharp decline in the confirmed cases of COVID-19.  On February 2, India recorded 8,635 new cases of infections in 24 hours, which is the lowest since June 1, when the country reported 7,724 new coronavirus cases in a single day. Active cases in India stand at 1,60,057, which comprises 1.49 per cent of the total caseload, as per the government data. Kerala and Maharashtra continue to have the highest number of active cases, accounting for over 70 per cent of the currently active cases in the country.

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