COVID symptoms in 2025 look largely the same as they have since Omicron became dominant, but the mix has shifted. The hallmark loss of smell that defined early pandemic infections is now far less common, while sore throat, fatigue, and digestive issues have moved to the foreground. Symptoms typically appear 3 to 6 days after exposure and last up to 10 days, though some people deal with them longer.
What Current COVID Symptoms Look Like
The variants circulating now, descendants of Omicron, don’t produce a dramatically different symptom profile from what’s been seen over the past couple of years. Experts at Johns Hopkins note that we’re not seeing anything new or different with these variants, and that infections tend to be milder overall. That’s likely not because the virus itself has weakened, but because most people now carry significant immunity from prior infections, vaccination, or both.
The most commonly reported symptoms include sore throat, cough, fatigue, headache, congestion, and body aches. One notable feature of recent infections: a particularly intense sore throat that some patients have described as “razor throat.” Dartmouth Health physicians flagged this as a pattern associated with variants circulating in 2025.
Fever and chills still occur but aren’t as universal as they were in earlier waves. Many people describe their infection as feeling like a bad cold, with congestion and a scratchy throat dominating the first few days.
Digestive Symptoms Are More Common Than People Think
COVID has always had a gastrointestinal component, but it often gets overlooked. Studies have found that anywhere from 16% to over 50% of infected people experience digestive symptoms, depending on the population studied. In several U.S. studies, roughly a third of patients reported diarrhea, and nausea or vomiting showed up in 10% to 26% of cases. Abdominal pain affected about 9% to 15%.
Loss of appetite is actually the single most common gut-related symptom, reported by roughly 27% of patients in pooled analyses. If your main symptoms are nausea, stomach cramps, or diarrhea without much respiratory involvement, COVID is still worth considering and testing for. These digestive symptoms can appear on their own or alongside the more typical cough and sore throat.
Loss of Smell and Taste Has Faded
During the original and Alpha waves, sudden loss of smell or taste was practically a signature of COVID. Early studies found smell-related changes in up to 64% of patients. That’s dropped considerably. Research confirms that with the evolution of newer variants and higher vaccination rates, the likelihood of developing smell loss from COVID has decreased. It still happens, but it’s no longer one of the leading symptoms. If you do lose your sense of smell, it remains a strong signal that COVID is the cause rather than a regular cold or flu.
How to Tell COVID Apart From Flu and RSV
All three major respiratory viruses share symptoms like cough, fatigue, and congestion, which is why distinguishing them by feel alone is unreliable. That said, there are patterns worth knowing.
Flu tends to hit fast. One day you’re fine, the next you have a high fever, chills, body aches, and a dry cough. RSV, by contrast, creeps in gradually with congestion, a runny nose, and sometimes wheezing. COVID sits somewhere in between and is more variable in its presentation. The features that tilt toward COVID over the other two are digestive symptoms like nausea or diarrhea, a sore throat (especially an unusually painful one), and any degree of smell or taste loss. None of these is a guaranteed indicator, so testing is the only way to know for sure.
When and How to Test
Symptoms from current variants typically start 3 to 6 days after exposure, which is shorter than the incubation period seen with pre-Omicron strains. You’re contagious one to two days before symptoms begin and for several days after they subside. Some people carry detectable live virus for up to a week after symptoms start.
If you develop symptoms, the FDA recommends testing with an at-home rapid antigen test right away. A negative result doesn’t rule out COVID, especially early in the infection. If your first test is negative but you still feel sick, test again at least 48 hours later. Two negative tests spaced 48 hours apart give you much more confidence than a single negative result. Rapid tests are better at picking up the virus once your viral load has had a day or two to build.
Symptoms That Linger After Recovery
An estimated 10% to 30% of people who contract COVID go on to experience symptoms that persist well beyond the initial infection. This is long COVID, and it can show up even after a mild acute illness. The most dominant lingering symptoms are fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath.
Brain fog is one of the most disabling and least understood of these. Stanford Medicine specialists describe patients whose occasional pre-COVID migraines transformed into near-daily headaches, occurring 15 or more days per month. The cognitive difficulties that fall under “brain fog” include trouble concentrating, memory lapses, and a general sense of mental sluggishness that can persist for months.
Some of the less discussed long COVID symptoms are also surprisingly common. Over one third of long COVID patients report experiencing internal vibrations or tremor sensations with no visible external signs. Others develop a condition where their heart rate spikes abnormally when they stand up, along with hormonal disruptions, severe sleep disturbance, and a pattern called post-exertional malaise, where even moderate physical or mental effort triggers a crash in symptoms hours or days later.
There are currently no definitive blood tests or scans to diagnose long COVID. Physicians rely on comprehensive evaluations and ruling out other causes. Research is underway to develop biomarkers that can identify different subtypes of the condition, but for now, diagnosis remains clinical.