Knowing which symptoms appear first will help doctors identify COVID-19 patients sooner and make better treatment decisions.

USC researchers have found what appears to be the likely order in which COVID-19 symptoms first appear: fever, cough and muscle pain, then nausea and/or vomiting, then diarrhea.

Knowing the order of COVID-19’s symptoms may help patients seek care promptly or decide promptly to self-isolate, the scientists say. It also could help doctors rule out other illnesses or plan how to treat patients, according to the study led by doctoral candidate Joseph Larsen and his colleagues with faculty advisers Peter Kuhn and James Hicks at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience’s Convergent Science Institute in Cancer.

The scientific findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

Release date: 13 August 2020