Smell tests should be introduced in public spaces to spot Covid, says King’s professor
Smell tests should be introduced in hospitals, airports and shopping centres to monitor the spread of coronavirus, a leading professor has suggested.
Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London, has suggested that smell tests, which detect whether or not an individual has lost their sense of smell, should be implemented in public places as part of a wider strategy to track coronavirus cases.
In May, the UK added ‘anosmia’ - or loss of smell - to the official list of coronavirus symptoms. The announcement followed a study by King’s College London which involved 2.6 million Britons, and revealed that changes in smell and taste were the most reliable indicators of Covid-19.
The team discovered that 65 per cent of those who tested positive for coronavirus had reported a loss of smell or taste, compared to 57 per cent of participants who experienced a persistent cough.
Prof Spector, lead researcher in the study, argued that smell tests could prove to be a “cheap” and “easy” method to detect coronavirus cases and protect the public.
He said: “It would be very cheap and easy to do and is probably more useful than measuring fever because the symptoms persist longer and if you have fever you generally don’t feel like going out anyway.”
“At the entrance to a hospital clinic, for example, you could be asked to wash your hands, have your temperature taken, and you could have items to smell. The nurses checking you in could ask - whether or not you could smell certain items - such as peppermint.”
With schools set to reopen as soon as next week, Prof Spector argued that the tests could be widely implemented across public spaces such as airports, hospitals and shopping centres.
He said: “Wherever there is some sort of control of people going in and out - some sort of security, it makes absolute sense.”
“I think people would comply - I believe if you asked most schools, shops and institutions to do this, they would love to, they don’t want to have infected people in their premises.”
Smell tests have already begun to be put into place across the world. Earlier this week for example, it was revealed that researchers in Boston have developed an at-home smell test that will be trialled on 400 patients across three hospitals in the local area.
Prof Spector, who also serves as the lead investigator for the COVID Symptom Study app, a tool which has monitored the symptoms of more than 3.5 million people in the UK, stressed that given the complexity of the disease, a range of public health tools would be needed.
“One method on its own is not going to solve the problem,” he said. “But we have to think, what are the cheap easy ways we can be monitoring coronavirus cases - yes, test temperature if you need to, use smell tests and ask people about minor symptoms they may not have thought about.”
“Why not make handwashing mandatory when we go into supermarkets or when we use public transport? I don’t understand why we are not using the cheap public health methods which are more effective than things like track and trace in terms of numbers.”
