Kieran Quinn, a clinician scientist at the University of Toronto and Sinai Health System.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), common symptoms include fatigue, memory problems and shortness of breath, although the loss of taste and smell have also been reported among those with long COVID, said Dr. More than 200 symptoms have been associated with long COVID, and not everyone who develops the condition will experience the same symptoms. The emailed responses have not all been independently verified.Īlso known as the post COVID-19 condition, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines long COVID as the “continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Symptoms must persist for at least two months and cannot be attributed to other causes. Wright is one of dozens of Canadians who reached out to CTVNews.ca to describe their symptoms while suffering from long COVID. COVID-19 Brief newsletter: Sign up for an informed guide on the pandemicĪfter speaking with her doctor, she was diagnosed with long COVID and eventually referred to a clinic in Toronto.

At that point, Wright had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, she said. The 40-year-old mother from Newcastle, Ont., began to lose her sense of taste a few months after contracting COVID-19 in December 2021. “Some things just have zero taste at all … imagine not tasting ice cream anymore, that first sip of morning coffee?” “I can tell the odd time something is supposed to be sweet, sour, salty, spicy, but cannot tell you what I'm tasting,” she wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca last week. The only difference now was that she couldn’t taste her food. When Julie Wright joined her family for breakfast on Christmas morning, her meal looked identical to what she ate exactly one year ago.

Ways to get your taste buds back