Long-term COVID-19 effects include foods smelling, tasting rotten

COVID-19 has made its way through the United States for more than a year, but there is still much unknown about the virus’ long-term or lingering effects.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some patients who have been infected with the coronavirus have symptoms and clinical findings that can last longer than four weeks, or can reoccur following a patient’s initial recovery.

Bethany Baptist Church youth minister Ryan Welch discovered first-hand one of the more strange effects: much of his food smelled and tasted rotten although there was nothing wrong with it.

“I was eating a bowl of cereal in the morning and I noticed that it tasted disgusting, and it didn’t taste like food,” Welch said. “It tasted rotten, almost. It had a taste that I’d never tasted before. I can’t really describe it accurately.

“I took the first bite, and I was like, ‘OK, something’s not right here. Is it the milk? Is it the cereal? What is it?’ I took another bite just to be sure it wasn’t just in my head, and it wasn’t. I spit it out. I had my wife try it, and she said it tasted completely fine. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Welch initially lost his sense of taste and smell when he contracted the coronavirus in December, but it returned after a couple of weeks. Roughly four-and-a-half weeks ago, his taste and smell changed.

Welch, along with many others worldwide who have recovered from COVID, have experienced this condition known as parosmia. Parosmia, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), is a change in the normal perception of odors, such as when the smell of something familiar is distorted, or when something that normally smells pleasant now smells foul.

In Welch’s case, he had to try to eat bland foods, as meat, anything with a tomato base and even chocolate tasted disgusting.

“I really couldn’t eat any meat. I couldn’t eat any sweets, anything that had chocolate or peanut butter or anything like that,” Welch said. “I was basically limited to eating very bland pasta, because I couldn’t eat anything that had any type of tomato base. So, I couldn’t have pasta sauce, I couldn’t have pizza, nothing like that. I couldn’t have any type of Mexican food at all. I was literally eating grilled cheese and fettuccine Alfredo, and then drinking as many protein shakes as possible.”

Typically, symptoms of parosmia decrease over time. As of now, most of Welch’s tastes have returned to normal, although slowly.

“It seems like it’s starting to finally improve. Not everything is tasting normal just yet, but I’m able to eat most things again, that didn’t happen until this past Sunday,” Welch said last week. “I started noticing that things were starting to taste normal, so every once in a while I would try different things just to see if it was still going on, because I figured if I’m always just eating what I know is OK, then I’ll never know if it’s coming back.

“On Sunday, my wife and I went to Chili’s, and I tried chips and salsa. Since salsa is tomato-based, it was one of the things that anytime I tried it over that month, it tasted absolutely horrible. I couldn’t tolerate it, and I couldn’t tolerate even having the taste in my mouth. I tried the salsa just to see if it was OK, and it was. Since then, I’ve just been trying different things, trying to make sure that everything tastes OK. Most of it has, and some of it still does not. But it’s back for the most part.”

According to the CDC, some other long-term effects — also known as “Long COVID” — include fatigue, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, cough, joint pain, chest pain, memory, concentration or sleep problems, muscle pain or headache, fast or pounding heartbeat, depression or anxiety, fever, dizziness when standing up and worsened symptoms after physical or mental activities. In addition, COVID can have lasting effects on organs, including heart, lung, kidney, skin and brain functions.

There are still many long-term effects of COVID-19 that are still unknown. The CDC recommends people get vaccinated, regardless of whether they have already contracted the virus, and follow social-distancing and face-covering guidelines, avoid crowds and wash hands frequently.