COVID-19 has dramatically affected the lives of countless numbers of people around the world, but there appears to be some good news about one of the symptoms of the disease.

Many people report a sense of smell loss when they get coronavirus and it has been used as an early indication of infection. But sometimes, loss of smell, or anosmia, doesn’t seem to return to all patients. Though a French study appears to show that it does return in most cases, eventually.

A study out of the University Hospitals of Strasbourg revealed that most of the patients suffering from a sudden sense of smell loss recover it eventually. Loss of smell was an early symptom of COVID-19 that is thought to be caused by peripheral inflammation of the nerves vital to smell.

Unfortunately, many patients did not recover the smell after other symptoms had subsided. Understandably many of these patients feared that these symptoms would be permanent. However, this French study should remove these fears.

Patients that had been suffering from long-term symptoms of coronavirus, often referred to as long COVID, had to endure health problems including smell loss for many months beyond the point where they were infectious. But it now seems that a full recovery is possible for those patients that would include a return of smell.

The French team of researchers followed 97 patients, checking their sense of smell for signs of improvement. This group was made up of 30 men and 67 women with an average age of 39. All of this group had lost their sense of smell after contracting COVID-19.

The researchers asked this group of patients about improvements in their ability to smell after 4, 8, and 12 months. Nearly half of these patients were also given specialized smell tests to check their level of recovery.

At the 4 month mark, 43 out of 51 of those patients had regained their sense of smell. That works out as 84%, with 6 more patients regaining their smell after 8 months. Out of 51 patients, only two have not fully recovered after a year.

These findings show that 96% of patients and recovered their sense of smell after a year. These encouraging findings show that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for patients suffering from long COVID symptoms.

Though the seriousness and length of symptoms should remind people of the importance of vaccinations. This will help people make sure that they don’t find themselves having to deal with these difficult long-term problems that can affect you when contracting COVID-19.

Even after contracting the coronavirus without ending up in the hospital and suffering the very worst consequences of the virus, there could still be serious problems over the long term. People can, unfortunately, still be affected for many months and even years, even when they are clear from the actual virus itself.

Even though there are many fear-mongers putting people off getting vaccinated, the benefits are very obvious and the repercussions stark if you choose not to have the vaccine.