However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have COVID-19 just because you are feeling more worn out than usual. As previously mentioned, plenty of things could be responsible for draining your energy. You just need to know how to determine what those might be. To help you out with that, here’s how you can tell if your fatigue could be COVID, according to doctors. And for clarification on another symptom, This Is How to Know If Your Stuffy Nose Could Be COVID. One way to tell if COVID is the cause of your fatigue is if it is accompanied by other symptoms like body aches. “If you get more symptoms, so it’s not just the fatigue, but fatigue plus body aches plus a cough and a fever, that’s worrisome,” Andrew Varga, MD, a neuroscientist and physician at the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center, told New York magazine. And for places and activities that you should steer clear of right now, check out I’m a Doctor and Here’s the Worst Thing You’re Doing as COVID Surges. If in addition to feeling tired, you have a sense of fogginess or being “out of it,” this might be cause for concern. Cleveland Clinic pulmonologist Joseph Khabbaza, MD, says that some form of brain fog was found relatively often in patients, even in those with milder cases of COVID-19. And for more on cases that are not so mild, check out 80 Percent of Hospitalized COVID Patients Are Deficient in This Vitamin. In more severe cases of COVID-19, Khabbaza says patients often have more serious delirium that accompanies their fatigue. This, he says, may be a result of a lack of appetite—another symptom that can help you distinguish if your fatigue is being caused by COVID. “People may also have lower appetites so their nutritional status might not be great, they might be sleeping too little or too much, which can affect how your mind is wired,” Khabbaza says. And for more helpful information delivered to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb David Margolius, MD, a MetroHealth doctor who manages the system’s COVID-19 hotline, told the Cleveland Clinic that if you feel completely incapacitated by your fatigue, it very well could be because of COVID. “It’s more the run-down feeling you might get with the flu,” he says. “For folks who have had H1N1 they remember that feeling of feeling like they’ve been run over by a truck.” And for information on where the pandemic is worsening, check out These Are the 7 New COVID Hotspots in the U.S.
