Sore eyes are the most significant vision-based indicator of Covid-19, researchers at the Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) have said as they found that sore eyes were most common when the participants were infected with the virus.
The study is published in the journal BMJ Open Ophthalmology. For the study, the researchers asked people who had a confirmed Covid-19 diagnosis to answer a questionnaire about their symptoms, and how those compared with before they tested positive.
The study revealed that 16 per cent of the participants reported the issue as one of their symptoms. Just 5 per cent reported having had the condition beforehand.
Eighteen per cent of the people reported suffering from photophobia (light sensitivity) as one of their symptoms. This was only a 5 per cent increase from their pre-Covid-19 state.
Of the 83 respondents, 81 per cent reported ocular issues within two weeks of other Covid-19 symptoms. Of those, 80 per cent reported their eye problems lasted less than two weeks.The most common reported symptoms overall were fatigue (suffered by 90 per cent of respondents), fever (76 per cent) and dry cough (66 per cent).Lead author Professor Shahina Pardhan, Director of the Vision and Eye Research Institute at ARU, said: “This is the first study to investigate the various eye symptoms indicative of conjunctivitis in relation to Covid-19, their time frame in relation to other well-known Covid-19 symptoms and their duration.”
While it is important that ocular symptoms are included in the list of possible Covid-19 symptoms, we argue that sore eyes should replace ‘conjunctivitis’ as it is important to differentiate from symptoms of other types of infections, such as bacterial infections, which manifest as mucous discharge or gritty eyes, she added.