“In the past, as new variants have come on the scene, there almost invariably have been questions about distinctive symptoms, and after a while, when you gather a lot of data, turns out not to be the case — all of these symptoms have occurred before,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine in the department of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Meaning, the circulating COVID variants tend to produce the same sort of symptoms and disease as the ones from years ago, Schaffner added. “Although the more recent variants, these omicron variants, are less severe,” he said.
A very sore throat isn’t specific to the circulating COVID variants, said Dr. Carrie Horn, the chief medical officer and chief of the division of hospital and internal medicine at National Jewish Health in Colorado. Instead, it’s a symptom that has been associated with COVID infections for a while, Horn said.
Schaffner had not heard of the “razor blade” sore throat symptom particularly, but has heard of people having a severe sore throat with COVID infections.
While some people can have a very sore throat that could be described as razor-like, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to everyone — and it also isn’t some new, scary symptom that is associated with new COVID infections.
There is not one outstanding COVID symptom that marks an infection, said Dr. Mark Burns, an infectious disease expert at UofL Health in Louisville, Kentucky. “A sore throat is a symptom of this, but also fever and cough and fatigue, these are all symptoms as well,” Burns added.
“To sum it all up, the symptoms, including sore throat, are really no different. There’s no increased intensity based on sore throat or anything like that,” added Burns.
