By this point in the long slog of the pandemic, many people know the telltale symptoms of a COVID-19 infection: a ragged ache in your throat, a pernicious cough, congestion, fever and full-body exhaustion. But a tiny subset of people also develop less common symptoms, ones that can sound like hexes from a children’s story: hairy tongues, purple toes, welts that sprout on their faces.
"Every infectious disease has common and uncommon manifestations,” said Dr. Mark Mulligan, an infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health. And as we learn more about the coronavirus, he said, we may better understand the underlying causes behind these infrequent symptoms — but until then, it’s largely guesswork.
Confounding symptoms have been a component of COVID since the start of the pandemic; the loss of taste and smell has become a disturbing sign of the disease. COVID also has the potential to disrupt menstrual cycles, a side effect some women also reported after vaccination.