Smell or taste change, fever, and body ache were associated with COVID-19 positivity, and shortness of breath and sore throat were associated with a negative test result (p<0.05). A model using all 5 diagnostic symptoms had the highest accuracy with a predictive ability of 82% in discriminating between COVID-19 results.

To maximize sensitivity and maintain fair diagnostic accuracy, a combination of 2 symptoms, change in sense of smell or taste and fever was found to have a sensitivity of 70% and overall discrimination accuracy of 75%.

They concluded that smell or taste change is a strong predictor for a COVID-19 positive test result. Using the presence of smell or taste change with fever, this parsimonious classifier correctly predicted 75% of COVID-19 test results in this small cohort.