It’s interesting, but there are other respiratory viruses out there, and as people mix more they are vulnerable to be infected. Some will be suffering from long covid but testing negative because they’ve clear the infection.
She adds: ‘I suddenly lost my sense of smell and taste, which is really weird. I’ve never had that before.
‘It’s not like when you have a cold, you can’t taste things, and then if you blow your nose you can momentarily taste things. This was the absolute absence of smell and taste.
#> ## I’ve had every Covid symptom going… but still test negative
Mystified: Mollie Whittaker, who was left unable to move from her sofa by a Covid-like illness
Mollie Whittaker, a dental nurse from Southampton, has suffered ‘every Covid symptom going’ on and off since the end of August.
It began as a severe lethargy, and days later, transformed into the Covid-type illness we all recognise.
‘Within a day or so of feeling exhausted I took a rapid test because I was supposed to be going to a festival that weekend,’ says the 23-year-old.
‘I’d gone out for dinner at a local restaurant a couple of days before, so I assumed I’d caught it off someone there. But the test came back negative, so I figured everything was fine.’
By the end of the festival, Mollie, who has been fully vaccinated since January due to her job in healthcare, had acquired a ‘non-stop’ dry cough, a temperature and a loss of taste and smell.
Two days after she got home, Mollie ordered a PCR test from the Government website, which took a day and a half to arrive. She took it, sent it off, and two days later the results arrived: negative. But her symptoms gradually worsened, leaving her unable to move from her sofa and feeling as though she’d been ‘thrown out of a building’. She’s been unable to work since the end of last month.
After lateral flow tests came back negative, Mollie booked a telephone appointment with her GP, who said she couldn’t possibly have Covid if she’d tested negative. She was given a prescription for antibiotics to treat a chest infection, which have yet to work. ‘I’m sure it was Covid – I know what a bad chest infection is like and this is definitely not that,’ she says.
‘The worst thing is, I worry my boss thinks the tests must be right, so I must be pulling a fast one. But all I want is for this illness to end so I can go back to work.
‘As far as I’m concerned, I’ve had Covid. The tests must be wrong.’
‘And this I knew was very specific to Covid.’
And this loss of smell and taste happened to me years ago and it was not covid. So it’s not specific to covid, although it is also a symptom of covid.
