CoughĪ cough is one of the hallmark symptoms of COVID-19, Dr. When you have a higher-than-normal temperature, it’s harder for these pathogens to survive.

Typically, a fever develops because the body is working hard to try to kill the virus or bacteria that caused it, per the U.S. Chills are simply a byproduct of a fever.

“A fever is usually a sign that your body is trying to fight an illness,” she says. In general, the medical community recognizes 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit as a fever, and this is common with infections, says Susan Besser, M.D., a primary care physician at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. But, while the following symptoms can often be treated at home, they can still be tough to fight through and could linger longer than your average cold or flu. The symptoms below most often signal mild disease. Which COVID-19 symptoms are considered mild? So, which COVID-19 symptoms should you pay closer attention to-and what should you do if you think you may be infected? Here’s what doctors want you to know. “What we’re lumping together as ‘mild’ can be far from it,” Dr. People with more serious mild forms of COVID-19 also may be left with long COVID, he adds, and can have lingering fatigue, loss of taste and smell, and brain fog. People in the “mild” category “may not get to the point where they have to go to the hospital, but they can feel lousy and it may take a while for them to get on the mend,” Dr. You could have a relatively trivial runny nose and maybe a whiff of a sore throat at one end of the spectrum to someone experiencing a very significant fever, extreme fatigue, muscle aches and pains, headache, and a significant cough they can’t get rid of.” “The reality is, there’s a huge spectrum. “In the real world, ‘mild’ has generally acquired the meaning of ‘you have symptoms, but you don’t land in the hospital,’” he says. Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York, agrees. “Within the mild category, some people may have little to no symptoms while others may have difficulty performing their activities of daily living for a period of time,” he says. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Watkins says.īut there’s a wide range of people who fall into the mild category, says infectious disease expert Amesh A. “We are likely missing many cases here in the U.S.,” Dr. On top of that, certain people infected with COVID-19 can have no symptoms at all. Those with a severe case of COVID-19 typically end up in the intensive care unit (ICU) and may have to be put on a ventilator to help them breathe, he says, adding that “most people don’t require hospitalization.” In general, people with mild symptoms are able to manage them at home, explains Richard Watkins, M.D., infectious disease physician and professor of internal medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University. What does it mean to have “mild” COVID-19? “We’re concerned that people are dismissing omicron as ‘mild.’ Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril.”ĭoctors stress that “mild” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hanging out in bed, blissfully catching up on your Netflix queue-and that a mild case of COVID-19 is still something you don’t want to catch. “Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing in mid-December, per NPR. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to playīut officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) have cautioned against viewing Omicron as a mild variant.

Coughing up blood after covid