They ran smell tests on 2,956 volunteers with a history of COVID-19 infections and 569 who hadn’t caught the virus. On average, the smell testing took place 671 days after participants had first been tested for COVID-19.
Of the COVID-19 group, 1,393 thought they had issues with smell, and tests confirmed about 80 percent of them did. Surprisingly, the other 1,563 people in that group didn’t report any smell problems, but test results showed 66 percent of them had hyposmia or anosmia after their COVID-19 infections.