A Peterborough man whose symptoms ebbed and flowed for nearly two weeks and is now recovering from suspected pneumonia. A health-care worker whose sickness started with an upset stomach and a strange inability to burp. And a Toronto man whose entire household is now sick with different symptoms and who temporarily lost his sense of taste — but never spiked a fever or developed a cough.In the last month, these three people have all tested positive for COVID-19. They are now part of the province’s ballooning coronavirus case count, a grim tally that according to Star data reached 3,675 Friday when both laboratory-confirmed and probable cases are included.While all three Ontarians share the same diagnosis, their experiences have been varied and not necessarily captured by the province’s online “self-assessment” tool for COVID-19, which emphasizes respiratory symptoms like cough, shortness of breath and fever.In an outbreak where scarce test kits are being rationed and patients are increasingly asked to self-screen, the question becomes all the more crucial: what are the symptoms of “typical” COVID-19? For Ontario patients and health-care workers now confronting the pandemic firsthand, the answer can be aggravatingly elusive.“At the start of this illness (COVID-19), on the day you’re first symptomatic, it’s mild for almost everybody; you don’t suddenly have respiratory failure,” said Dr. Brooks Fallis, Division Head and Medical Director, Critical Care at William Osler Health System. “Those mild symptoms could be something else but it could also be COVID … People should be isolating themselves with any symptom of illness, any symptom at all.“We have to behave the opposite of how we’ve always behaved in regards to illness; lots of people won’t progress to critical illness. But if everybody walks around with their mild illness and spreads it, then hundreds of thousands ...
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