Coronavirus symptoms: Does this happen when you eat? It could be a sign of COVID-19

But encouragingly, the rate of recovery of smell and taste was high and occurred usually within two to four weeks of infection.

“Our study not only showed that the high incidence of smell and taste is specific to COVID-19 infection, but we fortunately also found that for the majority of people sensory recovery was generally rapid,” said Yan.

She added: “Among the Covid-19 patients with smell loss, more than 70 percent had reported improvement of smell at the time of survey and of those who hadn’t reported improvement, many had only been diagnosed recently.”