From very early in the pandemic, people who tested positive for COVID-19 reported an unusual symptom: loss of the sense of smell. It took a while for this symptom – formally known as anosmia – to be included among the official symptoms, and it has taken even longer to unravel why it happens.
Coronaviruses – aside from causing deadly diseases such as Sars, Mers and COVID-19 – also cause about a third of all cases of the common cold. And everyone who has had a cold knows that you get a stuffy nose and so your sense of smell (and taste) goes. However, people with COVID-19 who’d lost their sense of smell didn’t have a blocked nose – which made this problem particularly baffling.
Now, CT scans have revealed what is actually happening, and Simon Gane, an ENT surgeon, and Jane Parker, a flavour chemist, are here to explain the details.
Thanks to lockdown, many of us now have a bad back. After all, your dining room chair is probably not as ergonomic as the one you have in the office. You might find it odd that a couple of aerospace scientists are giving us their top tips for avoiding back pain, but poor desk posture is very similar to the posture astronauts adopt during spaceflight in zero-gravity. So they know all about sorting spines out.
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