If you have a cold right now, there's a good chance it's COVID, study finds

New data from the Zoe symptom-tracker app suggests one in two people with new coldlike symptoms will have COVID-19 rather than the common cold.

Tim Spector, an epidemiologist and the study’s lead author, said in a press release on Thursday that for most people, getting infected with Omicron would feel “much more like the common cold, starting with a sore throat, runny nose and a headache,” rather than fevers, continuous cough, or loss of taste or smell.

To get to the 50% figure, Spector and his team compared the number of new cases of a coldlike illness with the number of new cases of COVID-19 confirmed by a lateral flow or lab test.

“We need to change public messaging urgently to save lives as half of people with cold-like symptoms now have COVID-19,” Spector said.