OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence of anosmia in coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) patients . Coronavirus-19-related anosmia and hyposmia is a new emerging concept in the medical literature .

METHODS: A retrospective study on COVID-19 patients with anosmia and hyposmia was performed during the period between May-July , 2020 . The inclusion criteria were all clinically stable COVID-19 patients less than 15 years old with positive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Patients who refused to participate or leave incomplete questions were excluded . In this study, we investigated 1022 patients who met our criteria .

RESULTS: Olfactory dysfunction (OD) was reported by 53% of our COVID-19 patients, of which 32.7% were anosmic and 20.3% were hyposmic . Other neurological symptoms included ageusia (51.4 %), fatigue (63 %), myalgia (59.2 %), and headache (50.9 %), all of which showed significant association with OD . In addition, anosmia had a significant association with young age and female gender . However, there was no association between OD and pre-existing neurological disease .

CONCLUSION: Half of our COVID-19 patients presented OD (anosmia/hyposmia), which often associated with ageusia and many neurological symptoms.