Yes, COVID-19 can cause a bad or unusual taste in your mouth. About 32% of people who catch the virus experience some form of taste disturbance, and the most common complaint is a metallic taste that lingers regardless of what you eat or drink. This symptom was especially frequent with earlier variants like Alpha, Beta, and Delta, though it still occurs with newer strains.
What the Bad Taste Actually Feels Like
The taste changes from COVID aren’t one-size-fits-all. When researchers asked patients to describe what they experienced, over 55% reported a metallic taste, 20% described it as bitter, and about 17% said the taste was rotten or harsh. A small number reported a persistent salty flavor. Some people experience these distorted tastes constantly, while others notice them only during meals or at certain times of day. The distortion can make foods you normally enjoy taste unpleasant or completely different, which understandably affects appetite and quality of life.
This type of taste change is distinct from the complete loss of taste that COVID also causes. You might lose the ability to taste certain flavors entirely, develop a strange phantom taste that’s always present, or experience both at the same time.
How the Virus Disrupts Your Taste
The inside of your mouth is one of the virus’s primary entry points. The cells on the surface of your tongue, particularly in your taste buds and salivary glands, are rich in the receptor (ACE2) that SARS-CoV-2 uses to break into cells. The virus latches onto this receptor, gets inside, and starts replicating.
Interestingly, the taste-sensing cells themselves may not be the ones initially infected. Research suggests the virus first invades non-taste cells on the tongue’s surface, then spreads to neighboring taste cells through tiny tube-like connections between cells. Once the virus reaches taste cells, the resulting inflammation and cell death disrupts the taste-signaling system. The infection can also cause visible changes in the mouth, including ulcers, blisters, and redness on the tongue and oral lining.
COVID also shifts the bacterial balance in your mouth. In infected patients, beneficial bacteria on the tongue decrease while potentially harmful species increase. Specifically, bacteria like Streptococcus and Rothia become overrepresented, while species normally found in a healthy mouth decline. This microbial imbalance likely contributes to the unpleasant taste many patients describe.
Newer Variants Cause Less Taste Disruption
If you caught COVID recently, you’re less likely to experience taste problems than someone who was infected in 2020 or 2021. A large study comparing Delta and Omicron infections found that 33.7% of people with Delta reported loss of smell or taste, compared to just 13.4% of those with Omicron. That’s roughly a 70% reduction in risk. The trend has continued with subsequent subvariants, making taste disturbance a less defining feature of COVID than it was early in the pandemic, though it still affects a meaningful number of people.
Paxlovid Can Also Cause a Bad Taste
If you’re taking the antiviral Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir-ritonavir), the medication itself may be the culprit. In clinical trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine, about 6 to 7% of people taking Paxlovid developed a taste disturbance, compared to less than 1% on placebo. The taste is commonly described as bitter or metallic and was distinctive enough that participants in blinded studies could often guess they were getting the real drug. The good news: nearly all cases were mild to moderate and resolved after finishing the course of treatment. So if your bad taste started when you began taking Paxlovid, the drug is the most likely explanation.
How Long It Typically Lasts
For most people, taste recovers relatively quickly. The median recovery time is about 10 days, with an average closer to two weeks. By roughly two months after infection, about 79% of patients have their normal taste back. That leaves around 1 in 5 people still dealing with some degree of taste dysfunction beyond that window.
A longer-term study measuring taste function an average of 13 months after COVID diagnosis found that objective taste dysfunction (measured by standardized testing) was essentially absent at that point. This is an important nuance: many people who report ongoing taste complaints after COVID may actually be experiencing lingering smell loss, which heavily influences how food “tastes.” Nearly one-third of people in that study still had some measurable smell deficit a year later, which can make food seem bland, off, or unpleasant even when the taste system itself has recovered.
Managing Taste Changes
There’s no proven treatment that reliably speeds up recovery from COVID-related taste changes. A Cochrane review examining interventions for taste disorders, including zinc supplements and acupuncture, found insufficient evidence to recommend either approach. That said, several practical strategies can help you cope while your taste normalizes.
Cold or room-temperature foods tend to produce less of the metallic or bitter taste that many patients find bothersome. Strong flavors like citrus, ginger, and mint can help mask unpleasant phantom tastes. Staying well hydrated and maintaining thorough oral hygiene, including brushing your tongue, may help counteract the bacterial shifts happening in your mouth during and after infection. Some people find that switching between different textures and temperatures during a meal keeps the experience more tolerable.
If your taste hasn’t improved after several weeks, the issue may partly be smell-related. Smell training, which involves deliberately sniffing a set of strong scents for 20 seconds each, twice a day, is a low-effort technique that has shown benefit for post-COVID smell recovery and may indirectly improve how food tastes to you.