• Nicolas Munsch, Stefanie Gruarin, Jama Nateqi, Thomas Lutz, Michael Binder, Judith H Aberle, Alistair Martin, and Bernhard Knapp.
• Science Department, Symptoma GmbH, Vienna, Austria.
• Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 2022 May 1; 134 (9-10): 344-350.

BackgroundMost clinical studies report the symptoms experienced by those infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) via patients already hospitalized. Here we analyzed the symptoms experienced outside of a hospital setting.MethodsThe Vienna Social Fund (FSW; Vienna, Austria), the Public Health Services of the City of Vienna (MA15) and the private company Symptoma collaborated to implement Vienna's official online COVID-19 symptom checker. Users answered 12 yes/no questions about symptoms to assess their risk for COVID-19. They could also specify their age and sex, and whether they had contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Depending on the assessed risk of COVID-19 positivity, a SARS-CoV‑2 nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) was performed. In this publication, we analyzed which factors (symptoms, sex or age) are associated with COVID-19 positivity. We also trained a classifier to correctly predict COVID-19 positivity from the collected data.ResultsBetween 2 November 2020 and 18 November 2021, 9133 people experiencing COVID-19-like symptoms were assessed as high risk by the chatbot and were subsequently tested by a NAAT. Symptoms significantly associated with a positive COVID-19 test were malaise, fatigue, headache, cough, fever, dysgeusia and hyposmia. Our classifier could successfully predict COVID-19 positivity with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.74.ConclusionThis study provides reliable COVID-19 symptom statistics based on the general population verified by NAATs.© 2022. The Author(s).

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