Around one in four COVID-19 patients with olfactory dysfunction said that their sense of smell did not recover 60 days after losing it, in a large prospective study in Europe.

In about 2,600 individuals with confirmed COVID-19 infection, patient-reported prevalence of olfactory dysfunction was 85.9% in mild cases, 4.5% in moderate cases, and 6.9% in severe-to-critical cases. Nearly 24% patients did not subjectively recover olfaction 60 days after the dysfunction started. On evaluating a smaller sample of patients with objective olfactory tests, it was found that 15.3% still showed deficiency at 60 days and 4.7% had not recovered olfaction at 6 months. The findings are reported in the Journal of Internal Medicine… (Medpage Today)