As hay fever season gets underway in Japan, experts are advising people with seasonal allergies to start treatment before pollen in the air starts to affect them so that their symptoms don’t get confused with those of a coronavirus infection.
This year’s hay fever season has arrived amid the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant. The symptoms accompanying omicron resemble common symptoms developed in seasonal allergies and may be difficult to distinguish from hay fever, according to virologists and other medical experts.
According to the Japanese Society of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, it has been reported overseas that 73% of patients infected with omicron had symptoms such as a runny nose and 60% were sneezing frequently. Moreover, unlike infections with previously detected coronavirus variants, a loss of taste or smell tend to be rare with the omicron variant.