A top scientific advisor has warned the UK's official list of coronavirus symptoms is "dodgy" and urgently needs to be expanded.
Dr Nick Summerton, who is one of the country’s leading primary care diagnostics experts and has acted as an adviser to the government during the pandemic, said the list could be derailing efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Currently people in the UK are only told to call 111 if they have a high temperature, a new, continuous cough or feel like they can't cope with their symptoms themselves.
Now Dr Summerton is calling on the government to bring a group of clinical and public health experts together to form a symptom reference group, the Sunday Times reports.
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He says the group could analyse patients' symptoms since the start of pandemic and that the government should urgently expand its official list.
It should also include fatigue or extreme tiredness, breathlessness or feeling short of breath, loss of appetite, smell or taste, a dry cough and feeling hot or having a temperature, he says.
He said: “These two basic symptoms aren’t good enough. We need to consider what the broader group of symptoms are and the combinations of symptoms patients have. Time is not on our side and we must get this right.”
The WHO lists 13 symptoms while the US has expanded its list from three to nine in the past week.
Dr Summerton decided to speak out after his repeated expressions of concern to the testing tsar were reportedly ignored.
He says people who don't have the two official symptoms could unwittingly be spreading coronavirus throughout the community and that testing urgently needs to be expanded to include further symptoms.
“We’ve got people who are wandering around with the coronavirus and that’s the concern. Those missed cases will just spread around the community. That’s why I believe these two symptoms are a dodgy foundation,” he said.
“If we haven’t got this bit right, we’re never going to get a grip on the epidemic. If you don’t get the case definition right, you don’t know who you’re fighting.
“It is now urgent. I have very bad memories of the years it took for my ideas around the importance of symptoms for early cancer diagnosis to be taken seriously 20 years ago.”
Public Health England said it was the Department of Health and Social Care that made the “policy decision to go with cough or fever as the two main symptoms”.
