BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Doctors say the symptoms caused by the Omicron COVID-19 variant can be different than what we've seen so far.
"With Omicron, it tends to be more like a head cold rather than a chest cold," said University of Alabama at Birmingham Doctor Sarah Nafziger. "A lot of the symptoms are more sneezing, congestion, runny nose, things like that. And with Delta, what we saw was more cough, a lot more fevers with that. I mean, you can still have all of those symptoms with any of the variants."
Dr. Nafziger says there have been fewer reports of people losing their sense of taste and smell with Omicron.
"If you're one of those people who are waiting on that to happen to decide whether you have COVID, then you're out of luck with this variant because it doesn't always, and that's great news," said Dr. Nafziger.
As of January 4, the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) reports the state's 7-day moving percentage of positivity in COVID testing is at an all-time high of 38.5%. So far, the state has reported 7,787 cases of the virus in the new year. There have been a total of 921,175 total cases of COVID-19 reported since the beginning of the pandemic, per ADPH as of January 4.